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BY VICTORIA CROSS 


FIVE NIGHTS 
LIFE’S SHOP WINDOW 
ANNA LOMBARD 
SIX WOMEN 

SIX CHAPTERS OF A MAN’S LIFE 
THE WOMAN WHO DIDN’T 
TO-MORROW? 

PAULA 

A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE 
RELIGION OF EVELYN HASTINGS 
LIFE OF MY HEART 



PAULA 


A Sketch from Life 


by 


VICTORIA CROSS 





NEW YORK 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 


raiy of Councii 

AiJig l«ii»a840 



V 


PAULA 


I 

It was between twelve and one: the night was 
dark and wet, with some snow falling occa- 
sionally through the blackness. The rain-swept 
streets were deserted, cleared by the icy gusts of 
wind that came whirling down them and making 
the light flicker till it was blue in the lamp-posts. 

The Strand was almost quiet, the theatres 
closed. The rush of cabs, the hurry and confu- 
sion, the warfare of dripping umbrellas above 
the struggling crowd, the crush of wet, wind- 
blown, angry figures dispersing in different direc- 
tions, all the noise and bustle attending the dis- 
gorgement of the different theatres was over, and 
the Strand relapsed into gloomy, sullen black- 
ness and quietude. 

All who had any shelter of any sort, any place 
bearing the remotest resemblance to home, sought 
it hastily that night. Anywhere to be out of the 


10 


PAULA 


teeth of that gusty wind and the grip of the fall- 
ing temperature! 

In one of the small, poor, black-looking houses 
of Lisle Street, Leicester Square, in the window 
over the door — that is to say, the drawing-room 
window — glowed a red blind. The light behind it 
must have been strong and the crimson blind new, 
for it made a warm patch of colour, a striking 
point in the damp, dismal, narrow street. It 
looked warm and cheery, that little red square, 
and it seemed to wink knowingly at you as you 
turned up Leicester Street towards it, or blink 
sleepily if you passed straight on along Coventry 
Street, giving it only a sideway glance. Behind 
the red blind was a small square room with a low 
and rather grimy ceiling: the air was thick with 
tobacco smoke, and heavy with the scent of gin 
and water and coffee; three gas-burners turned 
fully on and blazing merrily without globes .and 
a good fire made the atmosphere oppressively 
warm. 

A short shabby horse-hair couch dragged up to 
the fireplace accommodated two people. A man 
in an old fur-lined coat, used apparently as an im- 
provised dressing-gown, sat in the corner of it, 
his elbow resting on the head, and the cigarette 
he was absently regarding held in two fingers; a 
girl was seated at the end with her back half 
turned to him, and her feet on the fender. An- 
other man sat on the table swinging his legs 
before the fire, and stirring the contents of his 


PAULA 


11 


tumbler with a tin dagger. Two girls were on 
the other side of the hearth making the same 
tumble-down chair do for them both, and taking 
alternate sips from the same glass. Their glaring 
yellow hair, obviously dyed, jarred painfully with 
their jet black eyebrows and “hair-pinned” eyes. 

“Charlie, how can you? I know I shall detest 
him!” exclaimed the girl on the end of the sofa, in 
answer to the remark of the man beside her. 

Her voice was singularly distinct and clear, 
and of beautiful timbre; it seemed capable of an 
infinity of subtle inflections. She turned a little 
more round as she spoke, with a half grimace at 
him ; a red fez cap was on her head, and her mass 
of light undyed hair, caught together by a single 
hair-pin, fell from beneath it to the sofa where 
she was sitting. 

“A man,” she continued, knocking off the ash 
of her cigarette against the mantelpiece, and then 
holding it idly between her white, smooth, and 
strangely flexible fingers, “who does nothing but 
lounge about the clubs, and drink and smoke! 
Bah!” 

There was such aversion in her tones that it 
produced a chorus of laughter: the young man 
on the sofa only murmured, “I never said he 
drank. Halham drinks very little, and I didn’t 
know smoking was considered a crime in this 
establishment! Wait till you see him!” he added, 
and watched his cigarette smoke absently. 

“I don’t want to see him,” remarked the girl 


12 


PAULA 


lightly, going on smoking. Then leaning back 
again towards the young fellow in the corner, 
and showing a lovely piece of white neck where 
the rather ragged collar of her dress fell open, 
“Where did you see this wonder first, Charlie?” 

“I met him at the Art Club,” he answered 
slowly, “and we had something to drink ” 

“Water?” interjected Paula, with a side glance 
over her shoulder. 

“No,” he said as the others laughed; “I had 
brandy and soda, and he had hock and seltzer, I 
believe.” 

Paula laughed contemptuously, and took a 
fresh cigarette. 

“And what did you talk about?” she asked — 
“himself? and the women who have loved him and 
he has never cared about?” 

“Oh no; art and literature, and music, and all 
sorts of things — he’s an awfully clever fel- 
low.” 

“Art and literature ! Can he paint a picture or 
write a book?” 

“No, but ” returned Charlie. 

“He criticises people who can,” put in Paula; 
“I see.” 

“We went on to his rooms then,” continued 
Charlie quietly, as if recalling some pleasant 
memory, “in St. James’ Street. Such jolly 
rooms, and he has a glorious piano — a grand, an 
Erard — and he plays,” he stopped and watched 
the smoke again. 


PAULA 


13 


‘‘Nice rooms, are they?” queried the man on the 
table. “What’s the rent, I wonder?” 

“What sort of furniture has he got, eh, Char- 
lie?” asked the woman across the rug. “Has 
he got them long mirrors, and thick carpets, and 
hormolu cabinets?” 

“What did he play?” demanded Paula. 

“I don’t know what rent he pays — he didn’t 
inform me,” returned Charlie, dryly; “and I 
didn’t notice the furniture. I should think he 
could play anything. He is a wonderful reader 
at sight. Chopin and Wagner seem to be his 
favourites. He played a polonaise of Chopin 
beautifully.” 

There was silence. 

Then Paula said: “Well, what is he like, Char- 
lie? go on with his catalogue of perfections.” 

“I don’t know how to describe him,” returned 
Charlie. “He is considered very handsome ; blue 
eyes, and black hair, and a white complexion.” 

“Very effeminate,” remarked Paula, judicially. 

“But how has he got his money, that’s what I 
should like to know?” said the man on the table, 
swinging his legs impatiently. 

“Well, I don’t know very clearly,” returned 
Charlie, vaguely. “His father was out in Aus- 
tralia a long time, director of a big banking 
concern there, I believe ; then he died, leaving his 
business and tons of money to his son, who has 
been principally engaged seemingly in spending 
the latter,” 


14 


PAULA 


Paula made no remark — she was staring into 
the fire, its red glow fell upon her face, and 
showed a contemptuous smile cross it as she heard. 

“I do believe as IVe seen him, Charlie,” said 
one of the women with the discordant yellow hair, 
leaning forward and speaking excitedly in her 
hoarse voice, that contrasted so strangely with 
Paula’s clear penetrating musical tones. “I was 
passin’ Hatchard’s, them booksellin’ people I 
mean, and he came out. ‘Lori’ I thinks, ‘you 
are a good-lookin’ man;’ that waxy skin just as 
you say, and eyes like dark cornflowers with 
long eyebrows over them, just as if they’d been 
drawn with a streak of brown paint. He looked 
about twenty-five.” 

“Halham is twenty-nine,” returned Charlie. 
“That was the man, I daresay; he is constantly in 
Hatchard’s.” 

“I don’t think I shall like him,” murmured 
Paula, absorbed in puffing her cigarette, and 
following its rising blue clouds with half -closed 
eyes. 

“You? Very likely not. You don’t care for 
anybody, I believe, except some of your own 
creations on paper,” Charlie answered, laughing. 
“You are just a sort of mechanical arrangement 
of bones, etc., with a lamp swinging up inside 
you for intellect, and a solid piece of agate where 
your heart should be. You don’t count as ordi- 
nary flesh and blood.” 

In the middle of their laughter the gas began 


PAULA 


15 


to go down. Both the noisy flaring gas jets 
dwindled suddenly to blue points and went out, 
leaving them in darkness except for the dull glow 
of the fire and the red spots of their cigarette 
ends. The man Keaved himself off the table with 
a regretful sigh. Charlie turned out of his sofa 
corner and felt in his pocket for lucifers. 

“Nonsense it is, turning off the gas!” exclaimed 
Paula, as she groped along the mantelpiece. 

“Well, we must be going; come on, Liz,” and 
the two women got out of the big arm-chair. 

“Here are the matches,” said Paula; “but we’ve 
no candle, have we, Charlie?” She struck a match 
as she spoke. In the candlesticks on the mantel- 
piece there was some charred paper which had 
once surrounded the candle, but nothing of the 
latter remained. “I must light you downstairs 
with these,” said Paula, laughing, throwing the 
first match on the floor and lighting an- 
other. 

“You’ll have the place on fire, if you’re not 
careful,” muttered Charlie, putting his foot on it. 

“Come and be extinguisher, then,” laughed 
Paula to her brother, crossing the door and strik- 
ing a bunch of matches altogether and holding 
them above her head. They sent a bright yellow 
flame flickering down the stairs, and showed the 
figures moving down them. 

“Good-night,” she said. 

Several of the faces were turned back to her. 
Her own looked singularly youthful, gay, and 


16 


PAULA 


untroubled, as the match light struck on it be- 
neath the red fez and the curling light hair. 

‘‘Good-night,’’ they answered. 

She followed them out to the head of the stairs 
as they disappeared down them. 

“Entertain you better when I have my own 
flat,” she called laughingly over the stairs. 

“That the fellow I saw you with on Sunday is 
going to set you up in,” returned one of the men. 
“All right; tell him to look sharp.” 

Paula nodded. They had opened the street 
door; the matches burned down and hurt her 
fingers. She flung them on the ground, and went 
back to the sitting-room. 

“And to think I am a parson’s daughter,” she 
murmured amusedly to herself in the dark. 

“Well, I suppose we may as well go to bed,” 
she said to her brother, “as there are no candles, 
and I’ve pretty well used up the matches.” 

Charlie was already raking out the ashes of 
the grate. 

“You are economical,” she said derisively. 

“Naturally; I have to do the economy for us 
both,” he answered, turning round. “Good- 
night, dear.” He kissed her, and she kissed him 
in return, and went upstairs to her own little 
room at the back of the house and under the 
roof. 

As she entered she saw she had a more regal 
light to undress by than candles, matches, or the 
lodging-house gas itself. The room was flooded 


PAULA 


17 


with moonlight. The blind was fully up, and the 
light poured through the panes, reproducing the 
window upon the floor. Great squares of white 
light lay on the boards, traversed by a huge 
black cross of shadow from the window-bars. 
Paula stood looking up at the sky, in delight at its 
white glory, and the black cross fell upon her face 
and on to her bosom as she stood there. Then she 
turned with a yawn, slipped off all her clothes 
together, and got into bed, leaving the blind up. 

In a few moments she was asleep : wrapped in 
a deep, soundless, dreamless sleep. As the night 
wore on, slowly the light crept round, and at last 
it blazed all across the face, neck, and bosom of 
the sleeper, the white patch spread till it covered 
all but the little feet, and these remained in thick 
blackness. The moonlight rested on her. It was 
palely divine ; she was deliciously human. It lay 
on her, and touched the mist of yellow hair upon 
the pillow, the warm red lips, the solid whiteness 
of the full throat, the plentiful white arm thrown 
above her head, the long form that lay so easily 
and peacefully beneath the thin coverlet : it tried 
to render all these ideal and ethereal, but it seemed 
a thing apart. Paula lay under the moonlight, 
warm flesh and blood pulsating under its ghostly 
touches, deliciously womanly, delightfully hu- 
man: a thing made for sorrow and suffering, pain 
and sin and death. Predestined to all of these, 
and conscious it was so predestined, and yet look- 
ing out upon life joyously, innocently. None of 


18 


PAULA 


them had approached her at present. Her life 
had been as clear as the moonhght lying across 
her face; it might be taken to symbohse her past 
path through life, as the black shadows envelop- 
ing her feet might stand for the thick mud of 
sorrows and passions in the track of her future. 
And on her brow and breast lay the cross, the 
great cross she would have to bear that is common 
to all flesh — the cross of human desires. 

The daughter of a parson, she had said; and 
it was true. For twenty years Paula had lived a 
life of study and cloister-like quiet in a Suffolk 
rectory. Her father had taught both her and her 
brother, and brought them up in an impracticable 
way: to think, to feel, to reason, to understand, 
which are all merely branches of the great art to 
suffer, to write and read in several languages, to 
love classics, art, and culture, and to be quite 
ignorant of what common-sense people call “any- 
thing useful.’’ 

But this education, which is so fatal to those 
same common-sense people, is exactly that most 
calculated to develop any of those gifts granted 
and held by Divine favour only. Paula’s sensitive 
brain, excited by classical literature, trained and 
strengthened by Greek studies, and allowed long 
intervals in which to lie fallow, while she simply 
lay and dreamed and thought in Suffolk fields, 
or wandered through Suffolk lanes, turned slowly 
and steadily to creative work. 

The Rector would read his sermons to Paula — 


PAULA 


19 


sermons far too ornate for the ignorant poor to 
gain much benefit from, and as full of classical 
quotations and allusions as scriptural texts; and 
Paula would read little scenes from dramas and 
plays of her own writing in return, and each 
would appreciate the other — for the daughter’s 
brain was but a strengthened, concentrated rep- 
lica of her father’s. 

And when the Rector died, leaving his two 
children absolutely unprovided for as it seemed, 
they each Imd really a great legacy from him — 
minds filled with the slow, rich, easy culture of 
years of thought and reflection and study, and 
the secluded companionship of a cultivated mind. 
Neither had been to school; both had missed that 
disadvantage, and the degrading horror of ex- 
aminations and cramming. At the Rectory there 
had been no “Society,” and their life had mixed 
little with that of their fellow-creatures. 

Paula at twenty knew nothing of all those 
small jealousies and petty rivalries, flirtations, 
intrigues, httle miseries, and trifling pleasures 
and triumphs, in which most girls are at that age 
so well versed. She had lived apart from her 
fellows, and her life had been broad and large 
and tranquil; calm and grave, filled with study, 
and brightened with the warm affection of the 
two men who loved her. Fear, malice, vanity, 
envy, jealousy, and hate were all unknown emo- 
tions to her. Her mind had developed, buoyant, 
free, untrammelled, determined to live its own 


20 


PAULA 


life and hold its own views, independent of others, 
interfering with none and suffering no interfer- 
ence. Generous, sympathetic and sensitive, filled 
with ardent impulses and a superabundance of 
vitality, with no actual experience, and a brain 
excited by stores of theoretical knowledge, she 
stood on the edge of the world’s battle-ground, 
admirably equipped to suffer — a most tempting 
prey for the prowling passions of life. 

“You must go out as a governess/’ had said 
Paula’s maiden aunt on the Rector’is death. 

“Really?” had laughed Paula; and six months 
later had seen her and her brother installed in 
Lisle Street. She was earning eighteen shillings 
a week at one of the big theatres, he about thirty 
shillings by giving lessons in music and an occa- 
sional orchestral engagement. Eighteen shilKngs 
a week is very little, and Paula longed to get on in 
her profession. But to get on seemed even more 
difficult than to make the start. Two years were 
now completed and she had not risen the least 
little bit. Twenty-two years of age now, and still 
only a supernumerary, to stand on the boards 
towards the back of the scene, swing a basket 
backwards and forwards, and join in a chorus 
about “Happy Springtide.” 

Paula rebelled against her position every day 
of her life, but, in spite of outward discourage- 
ment, there rose continually within her, like the 
sap in the plant, a happy confident courage. She 
felt a certainty, a positive prescience of future 


PAULA 


21 


greatness some day, just as Jeanne d’Arc fore- 
saw the siege of Orleans while still tending her 
sheep on the hillside. 

She had written a complete play since she had 
been in London, and on looking at the finished 
work she saw that it was good. To get this play 
produced and herself given the principal part in 
it, was the desire that haunted her night and day ; 
but to attain this, in fact all between the desire 
itself and the fulfilment of it remained a blank. 
It seemed hugely possible and infinitely impossi- 
ble at the same time. Whilst reading it in her 
own room, stung by a sense of its merits, it seemed 
as if such a work could not and would not in the 
nature of things remain always dead to the world. 
Out in the streets, on her way to the theatre, it 
seemed hopeless to suppose any one would accept 
the production of an inexperienced little super, 
who walked to the stage-door, and wore a black 
stuff dress. She had found an opportunity to 
beg the manager of the theatre where she was 
employed to look over it. He had promised to 
do so, and when he received it, kept it for three 
months. At the end of that time, in answer to an 
urgent appeal from her, it had been returned. 
Paula opened the parcel and turned to the middle 
of the play. The two principal pages in it, con- 
taining the key to the whole, remained sewn 
together as she had sent them. After this check, 
Paula being merely an artist, and not having 
one respectable business instinct in her, let the 


22 


PAULA 


play lie unused on a shelf while she wondered 
vaguely if there was any way in which you could 
compel a manager to read a play. 

The days slipped by, and Paula lived on from 
one to the other, filled with a vague, restless dis- 
satisfaction whenever a chance word happened 
to stir those passions of vanity, ambition, and 
the appetite for life which lay deep down in her 
nature under her superficial indolence, like cobras 
curled under a blanket. 

After a time, the moon had travelled beyond 
the edge of her narrow little window; the last 
beam of light retreated reluctantly, as if loath to 
leave the warm, lovely thing it had illumined, and 
the unconscious sleeper lay there swathed now 
from head to foot in a blackness like the black- 
ness of death. 


II 


It was between three and four the following 
afternoon, and a thick yellow curtain of fog was 
dropping heavily over Leicester Square and shut- 
ting out the light from the dingy houses in Lisle 
Street. A clock had just chimed the half-hour, 
when Charlie Heywood, with his collar turned up 
and his hands deep in his pockets, came briskly 
round the corner of Leicester Street, walked up to 
his door, let himself in, and rushed up the dark 
uneven stairs. “He’s coming round!” he said 
breathlessly, bursting into the little sitting-room, 
where Paula was lying on the couch at her ease, 
with her knees drawn up, reading a yellow-backed 
French novel by the light of the huge fire that 
flamed up the chimney and illumined the whole 
room. 

She was smoking, as these were her luxurious 
days when she was in an engagement, and as she 
earned so she spent. Paula would never save. 
“Saving,” she would say, “makes all your life 
alike. When you have no money, you are hard- 
up because you have none; and when you have 
money, you are hard-up because you are saving,” 
and she eschewed it as a bad habit. 

She looked round as Charlie entered. Her hair 
was down as last night, and the fez cap sat on 


24 


PAULA 


her light curls; a warm glow was on her pale 
skin; she looked the personification of ease and 
comfort. 

“Who’s coming?” she asked in some surprise. 

“Why, Vincent. I met him just now in Picca- 
dilly — he was going to his place. He asked me if 
you were in, and I said 'yes,' and he said he would 
come round to see you in about half-an-hour.” 

“Very good of him, I’m sure,” returned Paula 
with a yawn, closing the book. “All the same, 

I wish he hadn’t. Why didn’t you say I was 
engaged, or something?” 

“Why ? You don’t mind meeting him, surely ?” 

“No,” answered Paula slowly; “only it’s rather 
a nuisance.” 

This last was a favourite phrase of hers. Nat- 
urally idle and lazy, it was only when stung by 
her ambition or desires, both terribly keen and 
strong when aroused, that she cared to exert 
herself at all. All the ordinary small concerns of 
life, for the majority of people so full of interest, 
were to Paula “rather a nuisance.” 

“Well, I should have thought that when we 
have to mix with so many vile common people, 
it would have been a relief to know some one in 
our own rank,” replied Charlie, taking off his 
overcoat and hat. 

“Yes,” answered Paula from her sofa; “only 
probably he won’t consider us his equals, and 
that’s uncomfortable.” 

“He knows a good deal about us, because I told 


PAULA 


25 


him,” he returned, going over to one of the small 
cupboards by the fireplace. “And as to what we 
are doing now, and our having no money, he 
won’t think anything of that — he is not the sort 
of fellow.” 

Charlie had extracted a small metal teapot 
from the cupboard, and some cups, and was set- 
ting them on the table. He paused to take the 
matches from his pocket and light up the gas. 
When he had done so, he stood looking at the 
girl on the sofa. 

“Oughtn’t you to do up your hair?” he said 
doubtfully. 

Paula’s eyes opened \\ide, and she raised her 
eyebrows. “I? No, I shan’t bother! He must 
take me as I am. I don’t care a straw what he 
thinks; besides,” she added quickly, seeing her 
brother looked hurt, “he’ll probably like this bet- 
ter. At the Duchess of So-and-so’s, where he’ll 
dine to-night, all the hairs will be done up. I 
at any rate shall make a change.” t 

Charlie laughed as he glanced over her. Per- 
haps she was right; certainly she looked artistic 
and picturesque as she was, with her tiny feet in 
their turned-up Persian slippers, the straight 
simple skirt that showed every line of the wonder- 
ful figure, the short Zouave jacket, and the fez 
on her curling hair. He put the kettle on, and 
continued arranging the table. When that was 
done he turned his attention to the room in gen- 
eral, putting some books straight on a shelf in 


26 


PAULA 


the wall, folding up loose newspapers, and alter- 
ing the positions of the chairs. Paula watched 
him with her hands behind her head and derision 
in her eyes. 

“What is the use of tidying the room?” she 
asked. “Why not let him see it just as it usually 
is? One day he is sure to come unexpectedly, and 
then hell get a shock.” 

“No pretence” was Paula’s motto in every- 
thing. “It gives you a great deal of trouble and 
only gets you despised,” she thought, and she 
never practised it in anything. She was clever, 
gifted, and, like most clever people, supremely 
contemptuous of the opinions of others; yet in 
spite of, perhaps because of, this she was popular. 

Charlie continued arranging the room to his 
satisfaction in silence. By the time he had fin- 
ished the kettle boiled, and he lifted it to one side 
of the grate. “I’ll go and wash my hands now,” 
he said. “We must wait for tea till he comes.” 

“Must we?” returned Paula. “I hope he won’t 
be long then.” 

Charlie went out of the room, and Paula 
opened her book again and settled herself lower in 
the couch. 

It was only a few minutes later that a knock 
came at the door in the street below, and after an 
interval the sound of a light elastic step upon the 
stairs, a pause outside, and then a knock. “Come 
in,” said Paula, and the subject of the previous 
night’s conversation entered. 


PAULA 


27 . 


A tall, smartly-cut figure buttoned into a slim, 
fashionable frock-coat, a rather long neck en- 
circled by its high white collar, and a pale oval 
face above with a charming smile on it, were the 
things that struck her as she rose from the sofa 
and advanced to meet him. The most distinctive 
thing about Halham’s general appearance was 
the air he had of belonging to the leisured, well- 
bred, moneyed class. Meeting him haphazard 
anywhere, in any dress, you would still think he 
belonged to the rank of idle, well-turned-out men, 
who lounge from one of their fashionable clubs to 
their rooms for exercise, and never walk farther 
than the length of Bond Street. 

He took her little soft hand in his, and said so 
gently and with such a soft voice, that it sounded 
almost affectionate, ‘T feel I know you already. 
I’ve seen you so many times, I should recognise 
you directly anywhere.” 

“Would you?” said Paula, raising her eyes to 
his face. They were very sweet eyes, and just 
now full of a soft admiration. “But mine’s such 
a little part.” 

They walked slowly over to the hearth, the 
firelight glinting on his half -patent boots, the 
Parma violets in his button-hole, and the gloss of 
his delicate shirt-cuff. 

“Will you have this chair?” she said, indicating 
the old leather one, and feeling sorry its springs 
would show in such lumps. 

He did not seem to notice it, and sat down. 


28 


PAULA 


She took the end of the sofa herself, thinking 
how graceful his figure looked in the chair and 
how charming his face was. It was pale and 
closely shaven, with level, tranquil eyebrows. The 
dark blue eyes beneath had a peculiar calmness, 
and the whole expression of the face was one of 
gay untroubled serenity. It was a striking, at- 
tractive countenance, and Paula's eyes drew a 
keen pleasure from it. All her preconceived antip- 
athy melted away. She did instant justice to 
his singular good looks. All her artistic instincts 
seemed suddenly to quicken and have fresh life 
as she looked at him. And these were at present 
the only ones she was conscious of. A handsome 
face was to her as a fine painting, a beautiful 
statue, a line of poetry, or a strain of music, and 
she looked on a man’s with the same cold admira- 
tion as she would have looked upon a woman’s. 
In these moments, as Vincent drew his chair a 
little closer to hers and smihngly made common- 
place remarks, no vague prescience, no prophetic 
shadow fell across the calm surface of Paula’s 
brain. 

There is a favourite tradition that when the 
human being stands before a crisis in his fate, 
some warning sense, some foreshadowing of it fills 
his mind. It may be so sometimes, generally it is 
the reverse. He faces all sorts of strange situa- 
tions, is thrown against striking personalities, and 
is filled with curious wonder and presentiments 
concerning their effect on his future; they pass, 


PAULA 


20 


leaving him untouched, and they and liis warning 
voice are forgotten together. Then, in a careless 
calm, some little trivial incident drifts up to him 
on the sea of circumstance — he thinks and feels 
nothing about it, no sense of danger even faintly 
approaches him, and then suddenly he finds his 
life’s tragedy upon him, it is all played out and 
over, past and gone by. It has happened. All 
that he expected, anticipated, thought possible, on 
other occasions, has crashed in upon him when 
he expected nothing, anticipated nothing, and 
thought nothing possible. If he survives tlie 
tragedy, it leaves him with his faith in omens 
sadly shattered. Paula, now side by side with the 
incarnate presentiment of all her future pleasure 
and misery, hardly a yard of space between them, 
let her eyes rest carelessly upon him and recog- 
nised nothing except that it was a graceful, pleas- 
ing presence. 

‘T believe you smoke?” she said interrogatively, 
with a half motion to offer him her cigarette case. 
It was a very pretty one, chased silver, and with 
her name in looped letters engraved across it. It 
had the air of a gift, as had the gold bracelet on 
the white wrist that stretched up for it to the 
mantelpiece. 

‘T do, although I find my nerves sufficiently 
bad without it,” he answered, smiling. ‘T’ll have 
a cigarette with you, if you like.” 

“I’d better not lead you into temptation, per- 
haps,” returned Paula, laughing. 


30 


PAULA 


Vincent looked at the dazzling white teeth, the 
soft face with its blue eyes and buff -coloured hair 
beside him. 

“I hope you won’t,” he said, laughing too. “I 
am afraid I should follow rather easily.” 

At that minute Charlie came into the 
room. 

“What are you two laughing at?” he said, in 
rather a surprised tone. “I heard you in my room 
upstairs.” 

“We were on a very serious topic,” remarked 
Paula. “Mr. Halham was lamenting the entire 
lack of moral strength in his character.” 

“Halham?” replied Charlie, coming over to the 
hearth and raising his eyebrows. “Why, you have 
immense strength, immense force of will, immense 
influence over others!” 

“Dear me!” murmured Vincent, leaning hack 
in his chair and looking up at Charlie’s enthusias- 
tic face with a smile. “I didn’t know I was so 
immense altogether.” 

Paula watched him with interested eyes. His 
face had a singularly sweet expression, and it was 
this that charmed her more than the regularity of 
the features. There was not a single conceited, 
sensual, nor cynical line in the whole countenance. 

“Yes, your influence over others makes you 
quite dangerous,” continued Charlie jestingly, as 
he began making the tea. “You are the sort of 
person one would break all the ten command- 
ments for, if it were necessary.” 


PAULA 


31 


‘‘Really?” laughed Vincent; “how very inter- 
esting! I should he sorry to smash up the whole 
ten, though I think there are a few too 
many.” 

“Too many?” repeated Paula, raising her eye- 
brows and looking at him with reflected laughter 
in her eyes. “Why, I wish there were twenty! 
Commandments were given us for the fun of 
breaking them!” 

Vincent looked curiously at the soft youth of 
her face and the gay, passionate eyes. 

“Oh! Well, I had not studied them from that 
point. Is that your view, Charlie?” he said, 
taking the cup of tea olfered him and stirring it 
reflectively. 

“No,” returned Charlie, with compressed lips; 
“I think they make dangerous and uninteresting 
toys.” 

“I think that has been rather mine hitherto, 
but I am sure your sister could convert me.” 

“Oh, I haven’t the spirit of a reformer in the 
least,” asserted Paula, still jesting. “My creed 
is, ‘Do and say anything you please, only let 
your neighbour alone.’ ” 

“The only disadvantage of that plan,” re- 
marked Charlie, “is that it gives your neighbour 
a lot of spare time, which he generously uses up 
in interfering with you. I found this parcel 
downstairs, Paula, addressed to you,” he added, 
handing her behind Vincent’s head a square par- 
cel in tissue. 




PAULA 


‘‘Oh, yes!” said Vincent, turning round, “I sent 
you in a box of sugared violets. I believe you like 
sweets.” 

“How did you know that?” asked Paula, laugh- 
ing, as she took the box from her brother and 
drew off its tissue wrapping, disclosing a round 
Parisian bon-bon box of an exquisite violet tint, 
tied across with pale ribbons, and with a wreath 
of violets painted on the lid. 

“Oh, I divined the abstruse fact by some occult 
science,” said Vincent, laughing, watching her 
with pleasure as she opened the lid and revealed 
the compartments of the box filled with the per- 
fect natural flowers delicately crystallised and 
preserved in all their natural colour and beauty. 

“How lovely! Thank you so much!” she said, 
with a little pleased flush, looking at him over the 
open box, while the delicate perfume rose from it 
and filled the room. “Are they not a beautiful 
colour?” 

“Very,” returned Vincent, smiling, and adding 
mentally, “exactly like your eyes.” “Have you 
ever tasted them?” 

“Never.” 

“Well, try now.” 

“Will you have any?” 

“No, thanks; I prefer some of your more sub- 
stantial biscuits.” 

Paula filled the little sugar-tongs sent in the 
box with the flowers, and ate them reflectively in 
silence. She was silent so long that Vincent and 


PAULA 


33 


her brother both laughed, and asked her what she 
was thinking of. 

“Well, the extraordinary confusion of sense 
that they produce,” she said; “they taste exactly 
as violets smell, but how can one sense be trans- 
lated into another like that? I don’t see.” 

“Oh, I think that is a fairly common thing,” 
answered Vincent, “the interchange or confusion 
of two senses. Some of them are interchangeable, 
taste and smell noticeably so, and all are more 
or less. It very much enhances the pleasure of 
any sense when you can double it with another — 
focus, as it were, two senses on any particular 
point that is supposed to appeal only to one.” 

Paula gazed at him with wide interested eyes. 

“But I don’t understand at all what you mean 
practically,” she said at last; “I can follow it in 
a way, but how does it act?” 

“It is difficult to explain,” said Vincent, 
quietly, with a slight flush, “but you have the 
proof of what I say in the flowers you are eating; 
you can only describe the taste of them by saying 
it is the scent of violets ; but a scent has no taste — 
you cannot taste a scent except by the translation 
or the confusion of the two senses.” 

“Are you familiar with what he means, Char- 
lie?” asked Paula. 

“No, but I have a dim idea of it. I should 
think that there is not much in it, except for 
those people whose senses are peculiarly keen.” 

“That’s very crushing, Charlie,” said Vincent,^ 


34 


PAULA 


laughing, and holding out his cup to be refilled. 
"‘I never said there was ‘much in it.’ I started 
by saying it was a fairly common thing; and there 
is no doubt of the intense enjoyment of a double 
sense. Sight and touch will double ’with each 
other sometimes. For instance, I mean you can 
sometimes think you see the softness and smooth- 
ness of a thing, but you can’t really see these — 
they are things that appeal only to the touch; in 
point of fact, your sense of sight has doubled or 
confused itself with that of touch — you are prac- 
tically feeling it as your eyes rest upon it, though 
you have no contact with it. You can back up 
four senses one behind the other sometimes in 
this way, intensifying your sight, say, with three 
others. Sound, again, translates itself into touch 
quite easily, witness Wagner’s music, where some 
of the sounds appeal wholly to the sense of touch, 
rather than to the ear.” 

He was spealdng to Charlie and slightly turned 
towards him, and Paula, listening, with her eyes 
resting on the thick waves of his black hair as 
he leaned his head on the chair just where the 
full stream of light from the gas jets fell on it, re- 
ceived suddenly a clue to his meaning. For the mo- 
ment she felt the glossy softness of the hair under 
the sensitive nerve-centres of her finger-tips. A 
shiver of awakening sense seemed to pass through 
her. She closed the box of violets with a laugh. 

“I know more now than when I began to eat,” 
she said lightly. “That box has been quite like 


PAULA 


35 


the apple of Eve. I feel just as she must have 
done with her newly-acquired knowledge.” 

“Have a cigar, Vincent?” said Charlie; “let’s 
try our doubled senses on that!” 

“No,” said Vincent, turning to Paula; “your 
sister promised me a cigarette.” 

“Yes! try this — it’s my own make,” she said, 
offering him the case. 

“Really?” asked Vincent, taking one. “How 
perfectly you’ve made it! I couldn’t believe it 
wasn’t machine-made. So many gifts,” he added 
softly, “and cigarette-making in addition. How 
I envy you!” 

“I don’t think one should ever be envied for 
one’s gifts,” returned Paula, gravely — “they are 
a handicap on life.” 

Vincent made no answer. Charlie gave him a 
light and settled down to his own cigar in the 
chair opposite. 

“I should like to study physiology,” she said 
after a minute ; “all that you said about the senses 
interests me immensely.” 

“Haven’t you ever?” asked Vincent; “I think 
it is the most useful, the most important thing to 
know thoroughly. If we have been given nothing 
but our physical organism to rely upon, we ought 
to understand that, and all its laws and powers, 
perfectly. Don’t you think so?” 

“Yes,” returned Paula, mechanically. She had 
a curious feeling of not thinking for herself at 
that moment, but merely floating forward on his 


36 


PAULA 


stream of opinion and judgment. ‘‘I know noth- 
ing of it.” 

“You know so much of everything else,” re- 
turned Vincent caressingly, “perhaps it doesn’t 
matter in your case ; but, as a general rule, igno- 
rance of this one thing is the cause of endless mis- 
takes in our own life, and endless wrong judg- 
ment of other people. Besides, unless you are a 
religionist, which I know you are not,” he said, 
smiling, “and neither am I, it is the basis of every- 
thing. All the character, the gifts, all the vices 
and virtues and powers, are the toys of the blood 
and the brain.” 

“Yes,” said Paula softly again, without looking 
at him. 

“Well, isn’t it best to know something of the 
material of the toys one is going to play with?” he 
asked very gently, looking at the pretty fair head, 
from which she had taken the fez, and which was 
bent a little now as she gazed seriously into the 
fire. “See how a child is told that the penknife 
will cut him if he does not respect it, and the 
painted horse must not be sucked, as the paint is 
poisonous. It is just the same in the great game 
of life.” 

“I say, Vincent,” expostulated Charlie from 
his chair, “you’ll make us think we are back at the 
Rectory.” 

Vincent laughed. 

“I ought to be back at my rooms,” he said 
drawing put his watch, “so we must defer thq 


PAULA 


37 


remainder of tHe service; but I do hope I shall see 
you again soon. We ought to see each other 
sometimes, we are living so c’ose together.” 

He got up. Paula handed him his cigarette 
case, which he had laid down beside her. He took 
it from her, his hand interlacing her soft warm 
fingers as he did so. 

“Good-bye,” he said: only that one word, but 
Paula flushed suddenly, with pleasure rather than 
confusion, under his eyes, and felt almost as if she 
had been Idssed on the neck or cheek; the sound 
in itself was a caress, and translated itself, as he 
had said sound could, into a touch. 

She murmured her “Good-bye,” and sat down 
again. 

“Charlie, I wish you wouldn’t disturb your- 
self,” Halham said as the former got up from his 
chair to accompany him to the door. 

When the two men had gone out of the room, 
Paula lay back on the couch — one arm round her 
box of sugared violets — staring up at the ceiling. 
Long after it was destined that, lying in this 
same attitude, this scene should return to her 
brain, and his jesting warning of the physiologi- 
cal side of life. Then she knew at last the truth 
of it; now the theory of the transmutation and 
doubling of sense interested her much more, and 
she lay thinking of it, and eating the mysterious 
violets at intervals. 

Vincent stepped into Lisle Street and com- 
menced to walk quickly in the direction of St. 


38 


PAULA 


James’ Street. He had one of the cigarettes the 
girl had given him in his lips, and he looked 
pleased, as if he had spent an agreeable hour, 
which he had. Quite a pleasant hour in that tiny, 
grimy room. Vincent always did manage to put 
in pleasant hours all over his day. He was really 
highly accomplished in the difficult art of enjoy- 
ing himself without his pleasure being at any- 
body’s expense. He always lived life to its full: 
absorbing all the pleasure it offered, freely, light- 
heartedly, and reining himself in with an iron 
will at the point where excess begins. He was so 
accustomed to pleasure that the sudden possession 
of it at any moment had no power to intoxicate 
him as with those unfortunate beings whom long 
self-restraint has ruined. For the few years be- 
fore his father’s death he had known little but 
life’s enjoyment; they had been brilliant and 
filled with gaiety, and in them had been founded 
the basis of the bright, hopeful, courageous tem- 
perament and the well-balanced mind that he pos- 
sessed. 

Suppression and restraint always damages a 
character, in the same way as it damages the body. 
In many cases it may be inevitable and necessary, 
but it should only be regarded as a remedy, never 
as a treatment. Both mentally and physically 
restraint is generally the parent of excess at some 
future date, and suppression is usually the nurse 
of deformity. A limb or muscle of the body if re- 
strained from its natural exercise, atrophies; if 


PAULA 


39 


totally bound up and debarred from use, it be- 
comes deformed : and the human character too far 
repressed, from any cause, inevitably deteriorates, 
twisting itself into distorted lines, becoming mis- 
anthropic, hard, selfish, narrow-viewed, or im- 
moderate, as environment favours. 

The only son of a wealthy Australian banker, 
who after his wife’s death had concentrated the 
whole of his affection in the handsome boy left 
him, Vincent had been sent to England and 
educated at Eton and Oxford : at both these, with 
the happy knack, which never after left him, of 
doing the best work or accepting the best pleasure 
life offered in the moment, he worked hard, loved 
and enjoyed the work while it lasted, and left the 
University with honours at twenty-one, to begin 
the real lessons of life. In the three years of 
pleasure that followed he learned much; they 
taught him the joy and the beauty of life, the 
worth of human effort, and engrained in his mind 
the healthy ardent love of existence. For the last 
four years, however, since his father’s sudden 
death, he had been face to face with the work 
and difficulties that his father’s large capital and 
extensive speculations carried with them. As he 
often said laughingly to his friends, he had en- 
joyed himself far more on his allowance than he 
had done since he had had the responsibility of his 
own fortune and income. He had none of his 
father’s love for business and money-making. 
However, since a certain amount of attention to 


40 


PAULA 


these matters was inevitable, he accepted his 
position with smiling philosophy and transacted 
his affair as well as a man can whose heart is not 
in his work. 

Those last four years in Sydney had been spent 
in occupations which went hard against the grain 
of his nature, and in his anxiety to do justice to 
the responsible position he found himself in, he 
worked harder and worried himself even more 
than was necessary. Each year the strain upon 
him seemed to increase, and at the end of the 
fourth his doctor ordered him peremptorily to 
England for change of occupation as much as 
change of air. And now he had been a year in 
London, and actually a whole year, as he had 
laughingly told young Heywood, “without any 
objects of affection’' — the friendship he had 
struck up with the boy at the Art Club being 
the warmest feehng he possessed for anybody at 
the present minute. 

Vincent was fond of women, and liked their 
society, but they were not by any means indis- 
pensable to him. In fact, he regarded them alto- 
gether very much as he did flowers, as sweet, 
delightful, ornamental things, charming to have 
about one’s rooms, to see and to enjoy, and to 
have gently and quietly removed when faded or 
withered. Not that he was brutal, or cruel, or 
heartless; he was the reverse of all these, and 
treated every woman with consideration and kind- 
ness, because that was the first way that occurred 


PAULA 


41 


to him. Only he always looked quite practically 
at things; and when a woman ceased to be at- 
tractive or pleasure-giving, from any cause, her 
place was no longer beside men, that was all. 
On this account he hated the idea of marriage. 
Fancy marriage in youth! Why, at forty he 
would not want a wife of forty — taste and dis- 
crimination does not decline with years — he 
would still prefer the beauty of twenty. Not that 
he always objected to other people’s wives, though 
they were forty. 

But though without a touch of sentiment, 
Vincent’s nature was essentially kind. He hated 
to see pain inflicted, hated inflicting it himself. 
Egotistic to a certain extent he undoubtedly was, 
but in thinking of himself first he always allowed 
his neighbour to come in a good second. He 
was not in the least cynical. He was as far 
removed from a cynic as he was from a senti- 
mentalist, being in the simplest sense of the term 
a materialist, and having the bright philosophic, 
frank outlook of one upon life and his fellow 
human beings. He could not imagine any human 
powers apart from human matter, and the belief 
he denied to the soul he placed in the body. He 
loved that, respected its powers, and sympathised 
with and understood its failings. This was the 
root of his kindliness to women, perhaps, and of 
his general philosophy. 

The man who is a materialist and philosopher 
is rarely unkind. There is little that he comes 


42 


PAULA 


across in others that can upset his equanimity. 
No being can be more cruel than the sentimental- 
ist if wounded in his sentiment, and in this life 
there is so much to shock and wreck it. Equally 
the cynic is cruel in his way, with his wearisome 
and monotonous disbelief of the obviously good 
and beautiful. 

Halham’s gay, light-hearted materialism led 
him for the most part to a generous belief in the 
good qualities of those about him. If these were 
disproved, he faced the discovery with philosophic 
indulgence. The absence of any great or certain 
expectations from humanity saved him from the 
bitterness and harshness of the disappointed sen- 
timentalist. 

A skilled doctor, from a physical examination, 
can read accurately a man’s mental or moral 
character. The disposition is far more a question 
of physique than ordinary people ever realise. 
No man is held morally accountable for the shape 
of his nose, yet, as a physician can distinctly 
prove, innate cowardice, or nearly any other so- 
called moral quality, is really as much a physio- 
logical matter as nasal symmetry. Vincent’s 
physician was perhaps the man who really knew 
his character best. The energy of the heart-beats 
alone was enough to reveal to him the nervous, 
excitable temperament. Of his many friends and 
acquaintances there was not one who knew much 
of his disposition or his life. 

His extreme reticence and reserve, coupled 


PAULA 


43 


with the refinement and intellectuality of his face, 
gained for him the reputation of greater virtue 
than he deserved. Not that he wished to establish 
any reputation. He was absolutely indifferent 
to what others thought or said of him, provided 
they were polite and amiable in his presence. If 
they chaffed him upon being moral he smiled 
pleasantly, if they taxed him with being immoral 
he smiled just as pleasantly, and no one felt any 
the wiser. But if his conventional virtue was per- 
haps over-estimated, his natural innate generosity 
and worth of character was probably underrated. 

Turning into Piccadilly a short, elderly, red- 
faced man almost ran against him. Vincent 
raised liis hat, recognising Lord Weston, one of 
his friends. 

'‘Oh, Vincent, there you are! I’m delighted. 
Have you got time to come round to the Club for 
a game of billiards?” asked the other as they 
shook hands. 

Vincent looked at his watch. ‘T am afraid I 
hardly have,” he answered; "I’ve only just time 
to get back to my rooms and dress before dinner 
at the Westcott’s. I’m sorry.” 

"Oh, well, another day then. I’ll walk back 
with you just as far as your place. By the way, 
how is your business getting on?” 

"Well,” returned Vincent, "my affairs are get- 
ting horribly mixed up. Do you know, I shall 
have to go out again shortly.” 

"No, don’t say that. We don’t want to part 


44 


PAULA 


with you. Why don’t you put in better mana- 
gers?” 

“Can’t tell how it is,” returned Vincent; “as 
soon as I am away, everything seems to go to the 
dogs. How are your coals going ?” 

Lord Weston was the owner of an extensive 
coal property in Ashby-de-la-Zouche, and, unlike 
Vincent, a pronounced pessimist. 

“As bad as can be,” he answered gloomily; 
“I’m not getting over a thousand a month now: 
perpetual worry too, and work. At my age it’s 
too bad. I often feel inclined to blow my brains 
out; I do indeed.” 

They had reached Vincent’s house by this time, 
and he paused, looking at his friend with a smile. 

“What an idea, Weston! Life is always worth 
having, and work makes the worth of it; I’ve 
found one can stand a good deal.” 

“It’s all very well,” grumbled back the other, 
“but you look fairly fagged out at times. But it’s 
no use advising you — you go on just the same.” 

Vincent laughed. “That’s not work, perhaps. 
Good-bye.” 

“You dine with us the day after to-morrow, 
remember.” And they parted. 

As Vincent went up to his flat he quite believed 
from his feelings that Weston might be right in 
saying he looked fagged out, and when he entered 
his drawing-room he did not pass through it and 
go at once to dress, but dropped into an arm-chair 
with a sense of fatigue. The cold had been sharp 


PAULA 


45 


outside, and as he sat there, there seemed a faint, 
peculiar, barely perceptible bluish tinge on the 
clear pallor of his face, or perhaps it was only 
the reflection from the turquoise-shaded lamps. 


Ill 


The following evening was dry and starlight: a 
strong wind swept the streets, but it had veered to 
the north-west, and was violent rather than cold. 
At five-and-twenty to twelve Paula was coming 
down the passage slowly to the stage-door, but- 
toning her gloves. Two or three of the actors 
and a girl belonging to the chorus stood at the 
door talking, and two men were just in front 
of her, settling themselves into their overcoats. 
Paula, looking up as she finished the last button, 
saw a tall figure in an overcoat, with a white silk 
handkerchief round the throat, suddenly appear 
amongst the others, and caught a glimpse of a 
crush hat over the bowlers and silks. It was 
Halham’s. He came in at the door, slipped past 
the group, that was too much engrossed in itself 
to take much notice of him, and came up to her 
with a smile. She glanced up and smiled too. 
She felt so pleased to see him, and the pleasure 
lighted up all her face. She looked very charming 
and quite well-dressed, in spite of the old black 
skirt she was wearing. She had a smart velvet 
cape of the latest fashion, and a large, wide- 
brimmed hat, from beneath which the youthful 
face and sweet eyes looked up at him, sparkling 
with animation. 


PAULA 


47 


“You were not at the theatre to-night,” she 
said, as she put her hand in his; “I know, because 
I looked for you.” 

“No,” he answered, “that’s why I’ve come to 
see you now. I thought you would let me escort 
you home, perhaps.” 

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Paula impulsively; “I 
should have liked it immensely, but I can’t. I’m 
engaged to somebody else to-night.” 

“Oh, that settles it then,” returned Vincent, 
the least shade of disappointment crossing his 
face. 

“I am so sorry,” repeated Paula anxiously, and 
looking up appealingly as if entreating him not to 
be angry with her for refusing. Vincent, who was 
accustomed to girls cutting their dances for him 
and always despised them for doing so, liked her 
for not offering to break her engagement, liked 
her too for the evident disappointment it was to 
her to keep it. 

“You can’t help it,” he answered quietly. “If 
you have made a promise you must keep it.” 

Paula still looked distressed, and her eyes were 
fixed anxiously on his face. 

She knew the second violinist, who was going 
to see her home, very well: they were great 
friends. He liked her in an unselfish, devoted 
sort of way, and she knew if she asked him to 
excuse her for that night, he would do so directly. 
It was a great temptation: she felt a sudden 
impetuous desire to walk back with Vincent; his 


48 


PAULA 


pale face looked very charming and the dark 
blue eyes very kind ; when he had come specially 
for her too! and she and Johnson could go home 
together every night. . Should she speak to him? 
But no, it would hurt his feelings, and simply 
because he was always friendly and faithful, was 
he to have no consideration? It was a mean idea, 
and she rejected it. 

‘‘I am so sorry! You can’t think,” she said 
again. 

Vincent looked at her with some amusement. 
“I’ll come to-morrow night, if I can,” he said; “I 
can’t promise, I mayn’t be able to, but I’ll try. 
This is your friend, I think,” he added, as a little 
man with a violin case approached them, peering 
hard at Vincent through his spectacles. “Good- 
night, dear.” 

He pressed her hand, lifted his hat, smiled 
down into her upraised disappointed face, and 
was gone without further hesitation. 

“Dear me, I’m very sorry to have kept you 
waiting,” said Johnson fussily, coming up to her. 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” replied Paula gently, 
and they walked down the passage and squeezed 
past the chattering group that had swelled by this 
time and filled up the doorway. She was just as 
nice as usual to the little violinist as they walked 
back through the wind-swept streets, but he 
thought her conversation a little abstracted; and 
no wonder, since she kept asking herself over and 
over again, “Was he offended, I wonder?” It 


PAULA 


49 


was only when she had said good-night to John- 
son, and was finding her way up the narrow 
staircase, that it fiashed upon her it was the first 
time she had cared a straw whether a man were 
offended or not. 

All the next day she thought about Vincent in 
a restless sort of way, and looked forward with 
keen pleasure to the evening. When it came, it 
brought disappointment. It was wet and she 
waited in vain for Vincent; he did not come. 
Paula would not wait long for anybody, and after 
ten minutes of acute longing to see him, vexation, 
and disappointment, she went home with an un- 
interesting super, Johnson having left the theatre 
early as soon as he learnt she was engaged. 
When she came in, her brother noticed her white 
disappointed face at once. 

“Will you take a note to the post for me, 
Charlie?” was the first thing she said, tearing off 
her gloves. 

“Yes, dear, of course,” he returned in some 
surprise, looking up from a “Goss’s Plarmony” 
he was studying. 

Paula sat down in her hat and cloak and wrote 
to Vincent: — 

“Dear Mr. Halham, — I waited for you this 
evening at the theatre, but you did not come. I 
was so disappointed. Were you offended with me 
last night? Please let me hear from you or see 
you soon. — ^Yours sincerely, Paula Hey wood.” 


50 


PAULA 


Charlie took the note without comment. When 
he came back Paula seemed nearly in her usual 
spirits. She had swept his Harmony aside, and 
was busy making him a cup of coffee over the 
fire. 

The next day about three o’clock, when she 
was lying indolently on the couch, yawning as 
she watched two winter flies circling round the 
blackened gasalier, and feeling too sleepy either 
to read or smoke, a letter was flung in at her 
sitting-room door. Paula bounded off the sofa 
and across the room, divining whom the note 
was from. She picked it up and carried it back 
with her to the couch, as a tiger does its pet bone. 
She scanned the outside critically, and looked 
long at the firm, distinguished writing which 
seemed to speak of the elastic wrist and hand that 
had executed it. Then she broke it open and 
read : — 

“Dear Miss Hey wood, — I have just got your 
note. I was dining out last night, and could not 
reach the theatre in time. I am sorry for your 
disappointment. You were perfectly right to 
keep your engagement the previous evening. I 
should have been very sorry if you had done oth- 
erwise. Will you come and have tea with me this 
afternoon, or would you prefer me to come and 
see you? — Yours sincerely, Vincent Halham.” 

Without a trace of fatigue or indolence now, 
in face or figure, Paula sprang from the sofa 


PAULA 


5t 


and ran upstairs. She went into Charlie’s room, 
where he was dressing to go out to a pupil. 

“Shall I go?” she said, giving him the letter. 
“Of course, I suppose it’s not quite correct to go 
to his rooms; but it’s more fun, and makes more 
change than his coming here. Does it matter?” 

Charlie was in the agonies of fastening a very 
stiff collar with a very weak pin before the glass, 
and waited to get it right before replying. 

“JsTo, it isn’t correct, and you couldn’t do it with 
heaps of men,” he said at last, drawing on his 
coat. “But Halham is so extremely nice in every 
way to women, I think you can go to him if 
you want to. There’s only one danger,” he 
added, “in your intimacy with him.” 

“What’s that?” asked Paula, with smiling 
eyes. 

“That you will get too fond of him. Vincent is 
a man most women find irresistible if he lays him- 
self out to please them, and he seems to have 
taken a fancy to you. He is a most charming 
fellow, and his society’s delightful; and if you can 
look upon him merely as a friend and interested 
companion, it’s all right ; but I warn you — he isn’t 
a marrying man.” 

“No,” said Paula slowly, and with a cloud 
coming over her face, and a sadness into her eyes, 
“and of course he would never marry me in my 
present position.” 

“Vincent will never marry at all,” returned 
Charlie decisively. “He is much too fickle 


52 


PAULA 


and impatient of restraint: he is just a seeker 
after his own pleasure, and takes nothing very 
seriously. Some people, I suppose, would slang 
him for his morals very much. I don’t. I don’t 
believe he’s ever been brutal or cruel to a 
woman.” 

Paula did not answer at all: she stood and 
watched him finishing his dressing with absent 
eyes, tossing the tassel of the window-blind to and 
fro in her hands. 

“Well, good-bye, dear,” said Charlie, as he was 
preparing to leave the room; “go and amuse your- 
self, only don’t fall in love with him.” 

He went out, and Paula walked into her own 
room. When, about an hour later, she walked up 
the stairs to Vincent’s fiat, she looked a very strik- 
ing and attractive figure, all in black, with a 
narrow, high white satin collar round her neck, 
and her light hair twisted up into the fashionable 
noeud de Diane, under the smart velvet hat. 
Finding the outer door of his flat open she passed 
through and knocked at the inner one. 

“Come in,” said a voice, and she entered. 
Vincent was sitting at an escritoire in the window, 
writing. He got up as she came in and advanced 
to meet her. Paula, looking up into his face, 
noted that he looked older than she had seen him 
do yet. The pallor of his face was more pro- 
nounced, and there were blue shades about the 
eyes. He looked tired and hstless — almost pain- 
fully so. 


PAUOl 


53 


‘'I am very glad you could come,” Ke said 
gently, in his quiet voice, as they walked over to 
the hearth together. 

Something in the grace of his figure, the ease 
of his walk, or possibly in the expression of his 
face, appealed to Paula’s quick eyes, and filled her 
with pleasure. Her face lighted with radiant 
animation, her lips parted in a sweet little smile 
as she thanked him for the chair he wheeled for- 
ward for her. To Paula to he in the society of 
any one she admired, and who, she knew, admired 
her, and whom she was anxious to please, was as 
it is to the plant to be in the sunlight. She seemed 
to glow and expand with new life as the plant 
does. Fresh colour was lent to the soft skin, an 
extra sweetness to the eyes, an added unconscious 
grace to each movement. Vincent’s presence now 
drew out all the charm of her responsive nature. 

‘T am afraid I have disturbed you,” she said, 
glancing towards the table where he had been 
writing, and on which were tossed masses of loose 
letters and papers. 

‘Tt is a delightful interruption,” he said, throw- 
ing himself into the chair opposite her, his face 
already beginning to recover its customary gaiety 
and colour in her presence. ‘T get so tired of 
perpetually worrying over business.” 

“What beautiful rooms you have here!” said 
Paula, looking round with soft admiration from 
the depths of the deep purple velvet lounge he had 
given her, It did not sound a vulgar or hour- 


54 


PAULA 


geoise remark as she said it. It had nothing of 
the gaping awe of a school-girl in it, no;ic of the 
appraising instinct of the parvenu. It was just 
the unaffected expression of her sense of beauty, 
whether in upholstery, or features, or landscape. 

“Do you think so?” Vincent said, a smile of 
pleasure crossing his face. “I’m so glad. I 
furnished them entirely after my own ideas.” 

It was a beautiful room they were in, and full 
of characteristics of the man who used it. It was 
very large and lofty, and the walls hung and 
draped after the modern fashion, not merely 
papered. The hangings were in a sort of yellow 
or dead-leaf coloured satin, that formed an ex- 
quisite harmony with the deep purple, grape-hued 
velvet of some of the chairs and lounges. The 
mantelpiece was of the snowiest marble, and the 
heavy, worked bronzed fender, resting on the 
Persian rug, was in itself a work of art. A grand 
Erard stood across one corner, not far from the 
long windows, also deeply draped in velvets 
blending the dead-leaf and purple tints of the 
rest of the hangings, and a great number of ex- 
quisite water-colours and sketches stood on easels 
and tables in retired nooks throughout the room. 
The carpet seemed to have been specially designed 
to accord with the rest, leaves in varying shades 
of brown and bronze and gold drifted in loose 
wreaths over a snowy ground. Everywhere stood 
cases of books, and these rivalled in number the 
statuettes of bronze and marble. The red fire- 


PAULA 


55 


light leapt amongst them now, warming them 
almost to life, and threw long shadows from 
the palms that stood here and there, looking 
as if they had just come from the hothouse in 
their fresh and vivid green. Some white flowers 
also, though it was December, stood in a vase 
close to where he had been writing. At the far 
end of the room there were the doors into his bed- 
room, closed now, and with heavy curtains drawn 
across them. 

Entering first, and glancing round, one would 
have wondered whether the occupier were student 
or artist, or poet or musician, and, as a matter of 
fact, he was by profession and to the world none 
of these. Study, and painting, and music were 
merely his tastes as a dilettante, but they were 
nevertheless the loves and companions of his life ; 
certainly not exclusive of human ones, but as cer- 
tainly supplementary to them. As Paula’s eyes 
took in the wealth and comfort round her, she 
wondered with an amused smile what this man 
had felt in entering her little dingy room, with 
its tumbledown furniture and grimy ceiling. 

‘‘What are you smiling at?” he said, smiling 
himself. 

“I was comparing this with our place,” she 
said lightly. 

“I have often lived in a place as simple as yours 
is now,” he answered quietly. 

Paula burst into a little gay laugh. “Simple’' 
is such a convenient adjective to apply to other 


56 


PAULA 


people’s belongings, when dirty and squalid, and 
common and cheap is the description they deserve. 

“May I give you a cup of tea now?” Vincent 
asked, getting up. “I always make it my- 
self.” 

Paula, leaning back in her chair, watched him 
as he moved a wicker tripod forward and lighted 
the spirit under the swinging copper kettle. 

“This is a very pretty figure,” she said, leaning 
towards a tiny table where an ivory statuette, 
about a foot high, stood alone. It was the nude 
figure of a woman. 

“Yes, it’s a lovely thing,” Vincent said, pausing 
a moment with the cup in his hand. “There is 
nothing, I think, in all the world so absolutely 
beautiful as the beautiful form of a woman,” he 
added, as he handed her her cup, and lifted his 
own from the table and sat down with it. 

Paula took the cup in silence, her eyebrows a 
trifie contracted. “Do you think so?” she said 
slowly, her eyes fixed on the delicate and charm- 
ing image ; “I don’t. I think it is merely the asso- 
ciation of ideas. There are other things more 
beautiful, but because this is so connected with the 
idea of pleasure, we put it first. From long habit, 
the ideas of beauty and pleasure have grown con- 
fused, and whatever an object may lack of the 
first if we can fill up the place with the second, we 
make no distinction, but just call the whole beau- 
tiful.” 

Vincent raised his leyel eyebrows ft little at this, 


PAULA 


57 


and gazed at her in silence with his serious, re- 
flective eyes. Paula looking from the ivory figure 
met his meditative gaze regarding her. 

“What are you thinking of?” she asked quickly, 
with a brilliant smile. 

“Of what you have just said,” he answered 
quietly ; “I have never thought of it in that way. 
Perhaps you are right.” 

“Well, if a woman had no connection with love 
and joy and life, but were only kept for food say, 
as sheep are, nobody would think her particularly 
beautiful,” returned Paula lightly, balancing the 
spoon on the edge of her teacup. 

Vincent was silent. 

“The truth of things,” she went on after a 
minute, “seems to me often to lie buried not at the 
bottom of a well, but beneath a mass of ideas that 
pass current for it. People make use of the ideas 
just as they are, tangled up with one another, 
without ever troubling to sort them out and see 
that each one keeps its own meaning. The ideas 
of beauty and happiness have got so hopelessly 
mixed now, nobody would ever differentiate 
them.” 

“Who taught you to sort out your ideas?” said 
Vincent gently, looking at her with amusement. 

“Plato, I think, chiefly. As a child I had to 
read page upon page, and not only translate it, 
you know, but also wrestle out his meaning. 
Then he is so utterly a sophist that when I had 
thoroughly grasped bi§ argument, I used to con- 


58 


PAULA 


struct my own to combat his — I used as it were 
to feel for the truth, and keep to it in my own 
mind. If you don’t do that in reading Plato, you 
must be misled, because he never sought to be 
true, only to be brilliant.” 

Vincent felt a strange sensation as suddenly, 
after an utter absence of many years, there rushed 
back upon him the remembrance of his own 
studies, his own ardour and love in his Oxford 
days for the classics, their charm and their mys- 
tery. The long quiet nights given up to reading 
the language of the dead and the past in wliich 
every man can find his own present and his own 
future, for Life holds nothing in the emotions of 
man that the ancients have not recorded. 

“Have you read much?” he asked, with a touch 
of envy wafted over his years of life and work 
from his student days. 

“Yes, a good deal. I used to read a whole 
author at a time, en bloc/' she answered, laughing 
slightly, with a sort of glee as a child recounts 
how many sweets it has eaten. “I read all 
Euripides in two months, and all Aristophanes in 
three weeks, and so on. Sophocles in one week, . 
one play every day: he is very easy and sweet. 
But I seldom read now. The charm has gone out 
of it. The desire has been stilled. It is funny,” 
she added, looking away from him to the fire, 
“how the three epochs of our life are marked by 
three crazes. All people seem to have them more 
or less. In one’s childhood one has a craze for 


PAULA 


59 


toys, concrete little objects to play with; then in 
one’s youth that dies utterly, and one has the 
craze for knowledge, words and thoughts for the 
mind to play with; and then that dies away too, 
completely, and one gets the last, and generally 
fatal craze, for life itself, and other human beings 
to play with.” 

Vincent gazed at her curiously, while his 
neglected tea grew cold in the cup. 

“You must know an immense deal about life 
already, since you have read so much,” he re- 
marked after a pause. 

“Yes,” she said, glancing at him quickly, “so 
I do, theoretically. I have been studying the face 
of life in a mirror, but it is only that, don’t you 
see? I know only the reflection. I have not met 
life yet face to face to know her. I have never 
clasped her hand, never laid my heart on her 
heart, never looked into her eyes.” 

“That is all to come,” he answered gently; “I 
only hope the eyes will smile when you look into 
them.” 

Paula laughed. “How frightfully seriously we 
have been talking! Plato is nothing to it. What 
are those I see up there? Cigarettes? I thought 
you said you ought not to smoke.” 

Vincent laughed and got up. He took the 
unopened box of cigarettes from the mantelpiece, 
cut it open, and handed it to her. “Quite so; but 
perhaps I do it all the more on that account. 
These I got specially for you; but they are very 


60 


PAULA 


strong. Dimitrino’s. I don’t know whether you 
will hke them.” 

She stretched out one of her hands, from which 
she had drawn the glove, and he watched with 
pleasure the smooth fingers listlessly extract a 
cigarette, as she looked at him smiling. 

“If they are excessively strong, I am sure to 
like them,” she said jestingly. “Pleasure begins 
where moderation ends.” 

Vincent laughed, and struck a match for her. 
“That might mean, excess only appears where 
pleasure is exhausted.” 

“Very likely,” she said lightly; “you probably 
know. My own acquaintance with pleasure is 
not extensive nor intimate.” 

There was silence for a moment or two, and 
she smoked in a delicate pretty way, and he 
watched her. 

“Play me something, will you?” she said, with 
a longing glance at the Erard. 

“With pleasure,” returned Vincent, smiling; 
“but I am afraid you will consider it rather a poor 
performance.” 

He got up and went to the piano, and drew a 
lounge up close beside it. “Come and sit here 
and inspire me,” he said, and Paula rose. “What 
sort of thing shall I play?” he asked, looking at 
her and not at the keys. 

“Choose for me,” she answered. 

He turned over the loose music at his side, and 
then drew out the “Brautlied/’ from Lohengrin. 


PAULA 


61 


“I will play this for you only/' laughed Vincent; 
“nobody else shall ever hear it from me,” and he 
looked away from her, and began to play. As the 
liquid notes went through the shadowy silent 
room, the whole susceptible, nervous woman’s 
nature sleeping in the frame of Paula, who as 
yet was but half girl and half artist, felt its 
dreams troubled and roused itself to listen. He 
played well, as Charlie had said, and under the 
magnetism of the dreaming eyes watching him his 
talent asserted itself to the full, and the slow, 
subtle, incomparable melody moved in its har- 
monious procession divinely under his touch. 
The large room was filled with the exquisite sym- 
pathetic bridal song, and the girl lay back with 
suffused eyes, entranced and listening. It was 
the exposition of a great natural power. Vincent 
systematically neglected it because he never fully 
realised that he possessed it. He knew that it 
gave him pleasure to play, and his friends to 
listen. The first he ascribed to his folly, the 
second to their kindness. As in everything be- 
longing to himself, he saw little worth in it, and 
merely laughed pleasantly at others’ valuation. 
“Nonsense,” he would say, “I have no gift what- 
ever, except that of appreciating other people’s.” 
He smiled now as he saw how the girl was 
moved ; then laughed and abruptly let his hands 
fall from the keys. 

“You look quite pleased,” he said jestingly, 
leaning his elbow on the wooden front of the key- 


62 


PAULA 


board, and his chin on his hand; “more so than 
you have yet. Apparently I play better than I 
talk.” 

“I don’t know,” murmured Paula, “which you 
do the better.” In point of fact, she knew noth- 
ing just then but that she was content, infinitely 
satisfied in the moment, in a beatific state of being 
which is the first flavour the draught of pleasure 
brings to the mental palate. 

“A safe sort of compliment that commits one 
to nothing,” laughed Vincent, looking down at 
her. 

“I must go; it is getting dark,” she said 
regretfully, but she did not stir. “What is the 
time?” 

“Time?” returned Vincent, turning to the key- 
board and playing very softly. “One of the 
names of Pain. Don’t talk of it,” and the music 
grew a little louder, and seemed to lay clinging 
hands on her sensitive soul, and to hold her there 
motionless. The light fell more and more, till 
the three long windows seemed far-oflP panels of 
white mist. The room was full of soft shadow 
and low sound. 

“I must go,” she said again. Vincent rose, 
walked towards the wall, and touched the electric 
hght button, and a dozen lamps throughout the 
room instantly glowed into light under their 
different shades. The one above the girl’s head 
on the piano flamed into a blood-red globe, and 
tinged her in its colour. He came back to the 


PAULA 


63 


piano, but she sprang from her seat with a deter- 
mination that expressed her reluctance. 

“No, really,” she said; “I have stayed too long 
already.” She laid the end of her cigarette on 
the silver ash tray by her teacup, and replaced 
her glove. Vincent made no effort to detain her 
further. They walked together towards the 
door through the large shadowy room with the 
red fire and the red lamp left behind them. 

“Good-bye,” he said, and she put her hand in 
his: it was held there, and she looked up. She 
was drawn a little nearer, and then somehow in 
some soft but irresistible way she found herself 
folded into his arms, close against his breast, and 
his lips against hers. Swayed by some power that 
seemed quite new to her and beyond herself, she 
linked her arms suddenly round his neck and 
kissed him back with her waim, smooth lips in a 
quick, responsive, passionate fervour. All the 
gratitude to him for the pleasure of that happy 
afternoon, all the appreciation of his charm and 
the sense of violent attraction towards him, found 
relief in that impulsive kiss. It was not the kiss 
of passion nor even love. These had not been 
stirred as yet; it was rather of enthusiastic ad- 
miration, as she might have bent suddenly over 
the page of a book that stirred her and kissed it 
with vehement delight. As he had said “Good- 
bye,” words had been leaping to her lips and 
striving in her brain — words to tell him how she 
admired him, how great her pleasure with him 


64 


PAULA 


had been. Then suddenly in his arms, so near 
his heart, there had seemed no way to express it 
all but this — no way so simple, so natural, so 
utterly satisfying, so necessary as this, and in 
a pure spontaneous enthusiasm she let all the 
strength of her fervid soul rush out upon her 
lips as they met his. It ran like quick fire through 
the man’s whole nervous, excitable being, but he 
gave no outward sign. 

‘Tt was very charming of you to come,” he 
said, very gently releasing her, withdrawing his 
arms from the warm, impulsive, living woman’s 
form, and raising his head from the soft fair face, 
glowing now with all sorts of lights and tints and 
smiles — ‘ ‘ Good-night. ’ ’ 

“Good-night,” she murmured. And ^e passed 
out of the door, and he walked back into his 
rooms. 

He came up to the hearth, where the fire sent 
out its warm red glow on his feet, and the lamp 
shed its soft scarlet across his face. He mechanic- 
ally took out a cigarette from the box, and stood 
with it unlighted. The kiss was still throbbing 
through his whole system, and his mind rose in 
rather dismayed surprise to review the situation. 
It had been no part of his intention nor wish to 
kiss the girl when he had invited her to come to 
him ; but there, suddenly, at the door, at the touch 
of her warm hand, the attraction she possessed 
for all men had come over him irresistibly. Al- 
most before he knew he wished it, he had drawn 


PAULA 


65 


her within his arms and her soft lips had been 
under his, and what a fresh ardent delight there 
had been in that embrace and kiss between them. 
For years past nothing had thrilled him as that 
moment had done. 

“She can kiss,” he thought, recalling the sweet, 
natural, spontaneous abandon on the thrown-back 
face and the fire of the lips. It had been inevita- 
ble, irresistible, unavoidable, that moment at the 
door, and very sweet; but still he regretted it. 
It was not what he wanted with this girl. Passion 
between them would probably spoil everything. 
And he had meant it should not be. He was 
annoyed with himself for yielding to the influence 
she had upon his senses, but he realised suddenly 
what a powerful, overwhelming influence that 
was. He had planned a quiet friendship, pro- 
tective on his side, grateful on hers, an interested 
affection, an intellectual camaraderie, such as al- 
ready existed with her brother, which would have 
been delightful with her clever, brilliant mind, 
and he dreaded the idea of passion, which he felt 
would burn up all these. He did not understand 
that all these things he thought he wanted were 
but disguises of the natural yearning towards a 
woman who attracted him, and without this for 
their bases they would not have sprung up 
at all. 

“I will keep it to a mere companionship,” he 
was saying to himself now, as he walked to and 
fro, calmly leaving out of the matter his nature 


66 


PAULA 


and hers, and the great inscrutable law that im- 
pelled them to each other. The more educated 
and cultivated the human mind may be, the far- 
ther it generally drifts from the great truth, that 
the will and the laws of Nature are inviolable, 
immutable; that they work secretly, insidiously, 
but unceasingly, and in the end all laws must dis- 
solve before them. The great invisible latent 
force of our own nature within us during life is 
as relentless, as unalterable, as illimitable as the 
power of death. The mind and the brain that 
asserts itself in defiance is as surely, as remorse- 
lessly crushed by it sooner or later as the grain 
beneath the slow mill-stone. 

“Yes, I’ll keep it to companionship,” he 
thought again, with a desperate resolve for the 
future, and an angry reproach to himself that 
he had been for a moment overpowered. It was 
for Paula’s sake he reasoned as he did. It was 
passion already on his side, though he refused to 
believe it, but at least it was an unselfish one. 
It was not her youth nor her innocence that ap- 
pealed to him so deeply, and stirred all the tender- 
ness of his nature towards her. It was the prom- 
ise of her life, the brilliant gifts that he beheved 
lay in her hands. To darken an opening life like 
this ! To spoil, or waste, or cripple those splendid 
powers! The very shadow of the thought sent 
a shudder of horror through him. 

“Mere companionship,” he repeated again to 
himself as the heat of the kiss died down within 


I 


PAULA 67j 

him, and the calm of his resolve came over him, 
and then he went to dress for dinner. 

Paula went down the stairs with a buoyant 
step, a glow of light-hearted happiness diffused 
through her, a light in her eyes, and a smile on 
her parted lips. This lasted until she reached 
the door and found herself in St. James’ Street, 
and then the mood, the rush of simple natural 
feeling was gone by: she found herself back in 
the conventional world in which we hve, and in 
which we are judged. She had for one moment 
been wholly natural, wholly herself. For one 
moment there had been no laws, no rules, no 
fashions, only just the leapings up of sweet, 
joyous, natural impulses; but here in the street, 
as a sudden tide, came back upon her the remem- 
brance of the modern conventionalities of our 
civilised life. The colour burned suddenly in her 
face, and her soft parted lips folded together in 
an angry line. 

“Fool I was!” she thought to herself. “We are 
no longer in the Garden of Eden. I wonder if he 
would misunderstand.” And somehow she did 
not think that he would; but still from her own 
standard, set up for ordinary daily life, she had 
erred greatly, and a hot anger against herself 
filled her. It was so unlike herself, too. In all 
association with men she generally placed so great 
a distance between herself and them that they 
felt and respected it. Why, here, had she so sud- 
denly failed? Never before had she given a kiss 


68 


PAULA 


to any one beyond her father and brother. She 
had been often asked, and it had never occurred 
to her as even possible to comply. Now, here, 
it had not seemed possible, it had not occurred to 
her to resist! It was incomprehensible. The 
anger and annoyance within her lent an uncon- 
scious quickness to her steps. She was already 
at the top of St. James’ Street, when she became 
aware suddenly of some one trying to overtake 
her, and stopped. As she turned she confronted 
a short, well-dressed girl with a sharp, fox-like 
face and foxy-coloured hair. 

“Oh, Maggie, is that you?” Paula said, recog- 
nising the girl, who stood always on her left in 
the garden scene in which they both appeared 
nightly. 

“Yes, it’s me,” responded the other. “Lor! 
you do walk at a pace!” she said, thrusting her 
arm through Paula’s, and then added, in a con- 
fidential tone, as they turned into Piccadilly, 
“Got any money?” 

“Got any money?” repeated Paula innocently. 
“No, I haven’t.” 

The other darted a side glance at her. “I have 
just seen you come out, you know.” 

“Yes! Just now, you mean? from Mr. Hal- 
ham’s — well?” 

They were walking down towards the Circus, 
on the quiet side of Piccadilly. The shops were 
all lighted now, and the pavements brilliant with 
streams of light from the windows. Paula looked 


PAUI7A 


69 


down at the face of the girl beside her, and fixed 
her eyes there with a cold, questioning gaze. 

“Oh, you do act!” said the girl sulkily. 

There was silence. Paula looked at her with 
the blood receding from her face, leaving it stone 
white, and her heart beating violently. The girl 
felt the gaze of her companion, and kept her own 
eyes stolidly on the pavement. Suddenly she felt 
a wrench at her arm. Paula had withdrawn hers, 
but she still walked on in silence. She was keep- 
ing a check upon herself with difficulty. When 
at last she spoke she merely said, quietly: “Mr. 
Halham is my brother’s friend, and I went round 
to have tea with him, that’s all.” 

“Teal” muttered the girl; “I’d call it milk and 
water, if I was you. But there, Polly,” she said, 
suddenly changing her tone, “I didn’t mean to 
offend you, really I didn’t, and I want you to lend 
me half-a-sov. ; do, I’m that hard up I don’t know 
where to turn — will you now? I know you’ve got 
it,” she added coaxingly, trying to take her arm 
again, but Paula resented it. 

“No, I haven’t got it,” she said coldly. “I have 
absolutely nothing at this minute. I have lent to 
you when I’ve had anything, but we are hard up 
ourselves now. I haven’t the least idea where our 
rent is coming from to-morrow.” 

“Oh!” returned Maggie, and relapsed into 
sullen silence. A few steps more brought them to 
the Circus. Paula was going to cross to get into 
Coventry Street, and Maggie’s direction lay down 


70 


PAULA 


Regent Street towards Waterloo Place. Paula 
parted from her with a careless nod. “So-long,” 
she said, and crossed the road. Maggie stood a 
minute looking after her. 

“Xasty, mean thing!’' she muttered beneath 
her sharp-pointed little teeth. “And all that 
affectation and side too! I’ll pay her out!” and 
she turned down Regent Street. 

Paula went on homewards filled with chafing 
irritation and bitterness, which after all is a very 
general state of feeling for us all in the press of 
our civilised life, very different from our emotions 
in our exalte moments, such as she had just passed 
through, when we take wing from it. “I must get 
out of this vile position,” she thought desperately 
as she walked on. “All my gifts, and yet as I am, 
classed with that creature ; and before the world, 
in his eyes too, we should be about on a level, I 
suppose ! Great heavens ! what have I done these 
last two years since I came up here? I have 
been trying and trying, and I have achieved 
nothing.” 

That same night by the last post came a few 
lines from Vincent. They told her he had had an 
invitation from a friend to spend a few weeks in 
Belgium, and that he had accepted it. All letters 
sent to his club would be forwarded, and he hoped 
to hear from her now and then. Paula grew paler 
with a curious pain for the first few seconds as 
she read. Then she shrugged her shoulders with 
a smile of self -contempt. “What is it to me? I 


PAULA 


71 


have got my worK to see to,” she thought. They 
were sitting at supper, and when she had finished 
the note, she tossed it over to her brother with a 
laugh. “Cheerful place, Belgium, at this time of 
the year,” she remarked. “I hope he will enjoy 
himself.” 


A COUPLE of weeks had passed, and the little 
household behind the red blind in Lisle Street 
was plunged into pressing poverty. For some 
unassigned reason Paula had lost her place at the 
theatre, and the eighteen shilhngs a week thus cut 
off from their small total income was a frightful 
loss. The reason for her sudden dismissal Paula 
had no clue to, except that which lay in two 
malevolent brown eyes looking out of a foxy face 
at her on the Saturday afternoon when she was 
abruptly cashiered. Thinking over the matter a 
thousand times, with crimsoning face, she re- 
membered the girl’s meeting with her * outside 
Vincent’s house; she remembered her words; she 
remembered the manager’s particular fad that 
those girls in the minor parts and lower ranks 
should be of unquestioned moral character. He 
had to tolerate constantly all sorts of peculiari- 
ties amongst the “stars”; but this, so far from 
inuring him to an atmosphere of moral elasticity, 
made him all the more virulent against any short- 
comings of the mere supers. Try as she would to 
shake herself free from the idea, Paula ^lould not 
help feeling that the innocent afternoon at Vin- 
cent’s rooms had been the root of the evil. It 
jarred upon her, and she could not explain her 
suspicions to her brother; she would not even 


PAULA 


73 


admit it to herself. She only reiterated to him, 
with a burst of angry tears, that they had given 
her no reason, and she knew of none; and they 
both bore their misfortunes with the pagan resig- 
nation their father’s teaching had instilled into 
them. Charlie’s lessons fell off too, as several 
of his pupils were laid up with coughs and colds, 
and too ill to take them. One week they had 
only nineteen shillings to meet their expenses, 
out of which their rent absorbed^thirteen shillings. 
When he had paid this, Charlie brought up the 
remaining six shillings and laid them on the faded 
cloth. The girl was sitting at the table, with a 
sheet of foolscap before her, and a long quill pen 
in her hand. She looked at the money absently 
for a minute, and then raised her eyes to his, and 
laughed. * 

‘Ts that all we have for this week?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

She shrugged her shoulders. “We must cut off 
our cigarettes,” she murmured, and went back to 
polish an epigram. 

Charlie sat down to the table with an air of 
desperation, and began to write a letter. When 
he had finished it, the girl looked up. 

“Whom have you written to?” 

“Vincent.” 

“Why?” 

“To ask him to lend us ten pounds.” 

Paula paled suddenly. “Give me the letter.” 

“What are you going to do with it?” 


74 


PAULA 


‘‘Burn it.” 

“What nonsense!” exclaimed Charlie; “ten 
pounds is no more to Vincent than ten pence! 
He would lend it gladly!” 

“That’s nothing to do with it. The idea’s 
horrible. Do let’s keep our friendship with him 
intact, and not drag our wretched money affairs 
into it.” 

“As you please,” returned Charlie, flinging the 
letter into the fire, “only I don’t see what we’re to 
do.” 

Paula returned to her work in silence, and her 
brother left the room. 

That same afternoon she went out and pawned 
her bracelet and cigarette case. They gave her 
five pounds for the one and ten shillings for the 
other. Then she went on into Regent Street and 
bought ten yards of coarse red silk at Liberty’s. 
She turned over every silk they possessed before 
the right tint was discovered, but at last she se- 
lected one. It was a deep blood colour with the 
lights and reflections of wine shimmering on its 
surface. She gave one pound fifteen shillings for 
it, and took the rest of the money back to her 
brother. 

“This will last a little while,” she said, caress- 
ingly; “as to what is to happen next, tu ne 
quaesieris scire nefas/" she quoted laughingly. 
The silk was taken up to her room and pushed in 
a wrapper carelessly under the bed. 

Some days later than this she had a long letter 


PAULA 


75 


from Vincent, in answer to one of hers that had 
told him in a general way of her difficulties in 
getting her work considered even. He said he 
should be back, he thought, in a few days, and 
added in a postscript: “Try Reeves, the manager 
of the Halibury Theatre. He is a friend of mine, 
and will help you, I think; only I should apply 
personally.” She read the letter to her brother, 
and every afternoon subsequent to its receipt 
Charlie asked petulantly, “Why didn’t she go to 
see Reeves?” But for a whole week Paula did 
not go, spending the afternoon and sometimes 
evening in her bedroom, locked in. One day, 
however, just after their nominal lunch, as he sat 
moodily over the fire, mentally considering his 
list of pupils, she came into the room behind him, 
and said quietly in her flute-like voice, “I’m going 
to see Reeves.” 

Charlie turned and saw her standing, a mar- 
vellous figure, in the dingy room, clothed from 
head to foot in blood-coloured silk. Over her arm 
hung her old black dress. 

“Do you like my costume?” she said. “This is 
for the dance at the end of the play. I made it all 
myself this last week.” 

“You’re not going down the Strand like that, 
I hope?” 

Paula laughed. “No; look here,” and she 
slipped her black skirt on, and then drew on the 
jacket bodice of her dress. In two seconds the 
crimson silk had disappeared from view. 


76 


PAULA 


‘'Yes ; it’s a fetching sort of dress. You copied 
it from that old picture, ‘A Persian Dancer,’ we 
had down at home, I know. Will the British 
matron approve of it, though?” 

“She’ll have to,” replied Paula, putting on her 
hat and coat. “Will you get back from Eahng 
to-night?” 

“No; I think not. They’ve got a big concert 
on. I’ll be back to-morrow some time before 
luncheon.” 

An hour later Paula was at the Halibury. Mr. 
Reeves had sent word he would see her if she 
could wait. He was busy with his manager just 
then. Paula assented gladly, and half-an-hour 
went by. The fog descended, together with the 
temperature, and penetrated the corridors and 
passages of the theatre. At four a common- 
looking young man brought her a cup of coffee, 
and mumbled something about Mr. Reeves being 
sorry to detain her, and improvised a seat for her 
where she stood in the passage, and left her again 
to her own reflections. Paula sat and waited 
patiently on the upturned box, one knee crossed 
over the other, and the flexible, boneless-looking 
little foot, in its muddy shoe, swinging slowly, as 
she gazed absently down between the pasteboard 
walls to the dim shadowy expanse of the stage. 
She held the coffee-cup in her hand untouched, 
until the coffee grew cold in the chilly little 
draught that played round her shoulders. Paula 
was indifferent to the coffee, unconscious of the 


PAULA 


77 


cold; all her thoughts and senses were absorbed, 
focussed, on those boards, that looked so smooth 
and clean in their present obscurity. She sat and 
stared at them until the sight seemed to hypnotise 
her; it seemed as if the shaded level fascinated 
her, as they say quicksands will fascinate a man 
who gazes long at them. At last, with a mechan- 
ical, noiseless movement, she set the cup down on 
the floor beside her, rose to her feet, with her 
eyes still on the stage, and glided silently along 
towards it. 

She went to the centre, and then paused and 
looked round. She was quite alone. The de- 
serted theatre, looking vast in its emptiness, and 
filled by shifting yellow vapour as the fog came 
oozing in from the outside, loomed before her 
vague and uncertain, the dim stage stretched 
round her. Paula looked, and the light of anima- 
tion and excitement leapt all over her face, her 
eyes widened and gleamed as they swept over 
the gloomy obscurity of the house. To her, it 
was full, full from ceiling to floor, of eager faces, 
dazzling with light, overflowing with a surging 
sea of humanity, of life, enchained, held silent by 
her, and she the sole mistress of this stage, the 
holder of the magic that held the house. She 
stretched out her arms to the vacant building in a 
sudden momentary intoxication, the intoxication 
that comes from the knowledge of power. 

‘‘Sooner or later I’ll hold you all in the hollow 
of my foot!” she murmured, her lips quivering in 


78 


PAULA 


an exultant smile. “One more rehearsal can’t do 
any harm before I show to the old bird,” and she 
slipped off her shoes. Two seconds sufficed for 
her quick supple fingers to unfasten and throw 
off the old black merino dress, another two to 
drag the battered hat from her head and subtract 
the two crossway pins from her hair, and then she 
stood upright, a vivid figure in the scarlet Persian 
dress, with stockinged feet, and loose hair, and 
falling sleeves. For a moment she stood just 
softly humming the measure, and beating her feet 
in time. Then when the bar assigned to it was 
reached, suddenly she gave the wonderful back- 
ward leap that makes the dancing of the Levan- 
tine Arabs a thing of wonder and intoxication 
for the eye. With her two little feet kept well 
together, she sprang upwards and backwards, 
her whole supple body convex for an instant in 
one single simple perfect curve, her head almost 
to her heels with its weight of hair sweeping the 
boards. 

It was a dance that she had practised over and 
over again, for sheer love of it, in her room, and 
sometimes before her brother. The first idea had 
been given her from an old book of plates they 
had had as children, illustrating the dances of all 
lands. The mere jigging of European countries, 
in which the feet carry the stiff motionless figure 
from one spot to another, appealed to her as little 
as the mere posturing and contorting of the 
Farther East, in which the feet remain motion- 


PAULA 


79 


less. It was the poetry of motion that lies be- 
tween these two extremes, in which the feet are 
not chained to the ground, and where every limb 
has to respond to the rhythm of the ankles, that 
Paula had made her own. 

Pay a young Arab to dance to you in the Le- 
vant, or, better still, come upon him unobserved 
when he is dancing before his friends, and never 
again will any other dance satisfy you. Paula 
danced now as they danced, herself drunk with 
1 the physical delight of it. Her eyes were half 

I closed, and her sense of hearing turned inwards, 
following silently the rhythm beating in her brain. 

\ She neither heard nor saw two men — Reeves and 

II his manager — coming down the wings, and was 
[ unconscious that they stopped short upon the 
i stage, open mouthed and eyed. They waited 

there and watched, silent, almost breathless, until 
the dance came to its close. Then Reeves coughed 
loudly. 

Paula turned, and stood for a second looking 
them full in the face, then she advanced easily. A 
brilliant flush from the physical exercise burned 
I on her cheeks, her widely-expanded eyes showed 
the nervous tension passed through, and there 
^ was a smile, almost insolent in its assured 
triumph, on her lips. As she came up there 
was an unconscious arrogance in her step ; in her 
whole walk the inevitable, subtle, physical ex- 
: pression of her mental attitude. It was a mistress 
I approaching her two dependents. She had the 


80 


PAULA 


sovereignty with which genius impartially invests 
the poorest and the humblest — a divine sover- 
eignty before which earthly sovereignty shrinks 
abashed. For that moment she was clothed in it, 
and she knew it, and felt it, and realised it ; and 
the two men before her realised it too, more clearly 
than was quite comfortable. One thought was 
present, however, to both of them — that which 
had held them so breathlessly would hold the 
house. When she was within a yard of them she 
stopped. 

“I didn’t know I had an audience, and such a 
critical one,” she said, resting both hands on her 
hips. “What do you think of my pas seul a 
VArahique?'' The tone was jesting and familiar, 
her eyes flashed mockingly over them. It was im- 
possible to restrain herself : the cells in her brain 
were glowing, the blood racing in her veins; she 
felt an irresistible sense of her triumph, the tri- 
umph of a thing perfectly accomplished, an art 
perfectly expounded. She could not recall the 
artificial humility of her tones when she had 
sought admission. The two pompous magnates 
standing there, round-eyed and limp, small po- 
tentates in the possession of a few roods of earth 
and a few feet of bricks and mortar, struck her 
as ludicrous in her intangible, impalpable, yet 
incomparable wealth of the potentialities in her 
own brain and limbs. 

“Ah a very wonderful performance,” said 

Austin Davies, Reeves’s manager. “Where 


PAULA 


81 ' 


under the sun could you have learnt such a 
thing?” 

“Learn,” echoed Paula, her lips parting and 
her eyebrows rising in derisive laughter. “I don’t 
learn! Who should teach me? The thing’s mine. 
I evolved it!” and she laughed again, throwing 
back her head, till they saw nothing but the white 
swelling throat and full under-chin. “It comes in 
my play, you know — the play I’ve come to you 
about. I’ve got the MS. here. I hoped perhaps 
you’d consider it,” and she looked at Reeves. 

He had stood silent, holding his chin in his hand 
and staring at her. As she turned and caught 
his gaze, there was a passing contraction of the 
expressive eyebrows. In these moments she had 
been all artist, and the woman in her forgotten, 
but Reeves seemed looking more at the woman 
than the artist. 

“Certainly,” he said; “I shall be very pleased 
to consider it. But where does the dance come 
in?” 

“The leading part has it, and it comes at the 
close of the third act.” 

“Ah — hum,” said Reeves, “then — I suppose it 

might be difficult to find another I suppose 

you would be the best exponent yourself?” 

“Well, it does seem likely, doesn’t it?” returned 
Paula, with a laugh, going over towards where 
her clothes lay, and picking up the roll of manu- 
script. “Here you are,” she said, carelessly open- 
ing the paper and handing it to Reeves; “there— 


82 


PAULA 


third act,” and she indicated with her finger where 
he was to look. Reeves did look, but his eyes 
followed the finger also with interest. 

Davies took the upper edge of the paper in his 
hand, and peered over his companion’s shoulder. 
Paula stood and watched them both, as they stood 
silent, reading. She knew the general effect of 
giving her writings in this way. It was almost as 
certain as turning on the spectator Medusa’s 
shield. The paper was taken with indifference, 
the first lines carelessly scanned, and then came 
the absorption of the reader, and his gradual as- 
sumption of similarity to a stone figure. 

Paula waited perhaps fifty seconds till the 
solidification was tolerably complete, and then, 
as carelessly as she had given it, put her whole 
hand over the middle of the page to draw it away. 
“That’s the play,” she said, “and I thought you 
might like to see me rehearse the dance, so I 
dressed ready for it; but now you have seen 
it, haven’t you? So I think I’ll be going 
home.” 

Davies and Reeves both raised their eyes 
simultaneously, and tightened their clutch on the 
paper as she tried to withdraw it. “This seems 
extremely interesting. Miss — er — Heywood,” 
said Reeves. “We must consider this. Suppose 
you come to my house now and read it through 
to me? We might get through some business this 
evening.” 

Paula was silent. She hesitated, and her hesi- 


PAULA 


83 


tation was visible in the uncertain swaying of the 
scarlet-clothed figure and the raising of her eye- 
brows. Both men watched her keenly. “I should 
think you might read it yourself,” she said at last 
in an injured tone. 

“I might, but I shan’t,” said Reeves curtly, 
letting the roll of MS. in his hands fly to again. 

“You’re not so busy. Miss Paula, surely?” 
added Davies, with a grin. 

“Very good,” said Paula; “I’ll come and read 
it to you.” 

“Get your clothes on, then, and wait here,” said 
Reeves ; “ I’ll come back and fetch you in a 
minute. Come, Davies;” and he turned away 
with the MS. still in his hand. When both men 
had disappeared down the wing, Paula went to 
her heap of old black clothing and her muddy 
shoes, and put them on. The brilliant Oriental 
figure vanished into its black shroud, the shining 
hair was bunched relentlessly into the crown of 
the shapeless hat, and, re-transformed into the 
common nondescript form of the poor London 
girl, Paula sat down on the boards from sheer 
fatigue, to wait for Reeves. “How funny it all 
was, not a bit like the interview I thought, and 
their finding me like that,” she muttered; “how- 
ever, it all seems smooth so far.” As the heat 
and glow kindled by the dance died out of her 
poorly-nourished body, and the delightful anima- 
tion of her triumph faded from her brain, she 
began to feel chilly, cold, mentally and physically. 


84 


PAULA 


The stage was draughty, and she shivered in the 
damp fog, and pressed her hands in her lap to 
keep them warm. 

In a few minutes. Reeves, looking twice his 
natural size in a fur overcoat and silk hat, with 
both hands plunged into his capacious pockets, 
came hurrying back. His face was large and 
pallid, and, together with his pale greenish eyes 
and light hair, brought before one’s eyes the irre- 
sistible suggestion of a large white cat. He 
perceptibly started as his eye fell on the little 
shabby black heap sitting on the boards just 
where he had left the brilliant Eastern 
dancer. 

“Come, my dear child, come,” he exclaimed. 
“You’ll catch cold,” and he extended one hand to 
help her on to her feet. “Follow me,” he said, 
and led the way round through the wings to the 
stage-door. It was beginning to snow outside. 
Reeves’s little brougham was waiting for them. 
An icy wind howled down the black street, whirl- 
ing a cloud of snowflakes in its path. As Reeves 
opened the door, it swirled over the threshold hke 
eddying water, and the snow stung their faces 
and fell white upon the door-mat. Two men were 
standing gossiping just inside the doorway; they 
nudged each other as Reeves and his companion 
came up, and both followed with interested eyes 
the pair across the pavement in the snowy wind — 
Reeves, huge and solid in his heavy coat, the girl 
slight, with uncertain footsteps, and thin black 


PAULA 


85 


clothes blown about her by the angry gusts. 
Reeves held the door open, and she got in and 
sat down in the soft corner of the carriage. 
Reeves followed, and took up between himself 
and his coat all the remaining two-thirds of the 
seat — a not unwelcome presence to her then in 
her cold, starved misery, by reason of his very 
air of warmth and wealth and comfort. 

He turned to her as the door snapped, and they 
started. “Well, little girl, that’s better, eh?” he 
said kindly. “Beastly night to be out in on foot.” 
He patted the small soft hand that lay ungloved 
on her knee — a hand that no fire-lighting nor any 
other work could roughen, nor redden, nor leave 
other than smooth and white and supple, as its 
nature was to be. Paula glanced up at him 
quickly, and read his face ; it was gracious, pat- 
ronising, benign, and kind and smiling — all that 
a man’s is, in fact, when he is with a woman who 
is pleasing to him, and by whom he feels certain 
he will not be repulsed. 

Paula felt a quick mental recoil, a sort of 
nervous apprehension as she looked up, and the 
image of that other graceful and fascinating per- 
sonality sprang up in her brain. But where her 
art was concerned, Paula was blind and deaf to 
all else ; her instincts fought savagely, unreason- 
ingly for that, trampling on everything that rose 
in its path. She saw that she was expected to 
make herself amiable, and she yielded at once to 
the necessity, ‘Tor my play/' she thought half 


m paul:a: 

unconsciously, as another woman might have said, 
“For my child.” 

She smiled back at Reeves a lovely smile, that 
seemed almost to light up the brougham like a 
flash of electric light. Want of food, fatigue and 
cold, nervous excitement, and the influence of the 
opium and nicotine of her incessant cigarette 
smoking, had all contributed to intensify the pal- 
lor of her face, and lend it a peculiar brilliance; 
false and delusive, and not lasting, but effective, 
fascinating, for the time, like the dying light on 
the consumptive’s features. She let her hand 
rest passive under Reeves’s, and said gently, in 
her softest tone, “Yes, it’s very good of you to 
take all this interest in my work. I have had so 
many disappointments, and had such a dreadfully 
hard time lately.” 

Reeves felt a delightful consciousness of his 
own generosity and magnanimity grow within 
him. “Well, perhaps that’s all coming to an end 
now,” he answered; “we must see what can be 
done with you. Next year you may be driving 
home in your own brougham, who knows?” 

Paula merely laughed, leaning back in her 
corner, and yielding her figure to the easy, spring- 
ing motion of the carriage. They were bowling 
smartly up Piccadilly now, and her eyes, looking 
through the window beyond Reeves, caught the 
flash of light from the window of the Piccadilly 
Club. She sat forward suddenly, and looked 
through the snow-whitened darkness at the bright 


PAULA 


87 


panes, with the figures of the men moving behind 
them. “Was he there?’’ she wondered; one, per- 
haps, of those very forms she caught sight of 
indistinctly as the carriage flashed by? Then 
Reeves’s words came back to her: Her own 
brougham — next year. 

Next year! might she not then be on a level 
with him; with name, money, influence at her 
command, would she not be his equal? Equal? 
She would be more, for half her gifts were divine, 
and his, at most, of this world. He would be a 
man of wealth, a distinguished figure amongst his 
own set; but she, if she could but develop and 
display her gift, would have the fame of half the 
world, — she who now, night after night, walked 
by on the wet pavements outside his club in all 
but rags. And he loved her now, she knew it, 
and what then when he saw her famous, brilliant, 
sought after? 

Her thoughts moved on, gay symphonies of 
colour, melting and changing one into the other, 
a wild but beautiful phantasmagoria of the fu- 
ture ; and she sat lost, absorbed in its contempla- 
tion, pale and with her lips parted, and her eyes 
fixed, and one hand clutched unconsciously at her 
beating heart. Reeves sat beside her, wondering 
whether he had really come across a good thing 
in this casual way, and roughly casting up the 
cost of mounting a play where the scene was laid 
in Persia. A jerk, as the coachman pulled up 
before the mansion where Reeves owned the first 


1 


88 PAULA ( 

floor flat and the one above, recalled them both. 
Reeves helped her out attentively. Paula’s head 
swam as she entered the heated atmosphere and 
glare of light within the glass doors, where the : 
small page-boys stood gazing through at the 
whirling snow beyond the portico, and the broad 
white steps of the general staircase, with their 
red carpet, seemed to heave and sway like billows 
rising in the ocean. Mechanically she took the 
arm that Reeves extended to her, and walked up, 
the stairs feeling like vague, yielding vapour to 
her feet. J 

When they reached the drawing-room. Reeves ] 
ensconced her in the most comfortable chair, put | 
one of the electric lamps behind her, so that it shed j 
a flood of shaded light over her shoulder, and, ; 
pulling his own chair within a reasonable distance, 
prepared to listen with critical attention. He i 
might be extremely susceptible where a woman 
was concerned; but he was a sharp, cute, hard- 
headed judge when his work came into the matter. J 
He made it his boast that he had never produced j 
an unsuccessful play. Now he did not even j 
glance at the girl, but sat staring fixedly into 
the fire, with all his soul in his ears, listening, | 
rapt, with his brain at full stretch. Paula had a 
quite remarkable talent for reading aloud. Her 
voice was singularly flexible, with tones in it as j 
soft as the touch of velvet. And it fitted round ■ 
each individual w^ord and sentence like an ex- i 
quisite setting to jewel3. She read for two hours \ 


PAULA 


89 


and three-quarters without a sign of fatigue, and 
then, at the last word in the play, let the MS. 
drop, and looked smilingly at Reeves. He 
jumped to his feet, and took a turn round the 
room. 

“First rate!” he said, as he came back and sat 
down opposite her again ; “first rate 1” He looked 
keenly at her. “Well, well!” he thought; “how 
unexpectedly one chances sometimes on a prize!” 
Aloud he only said, “I can’t promise anything, 
you know, until I’ve consulted my manager ; but 
I’m pleased myself, and if he agrees, we’ll bring 
it out. Then your dancing is quite remarkable; 
where could you have got it from? Have you 
ever been in the East?” 

“Never,” replied Paula, stretching her feet a 
little nearer to the hot blaze of the fire. She felt 
w^eak now, and dreamy, and faint, and it was nice 
to sit there in the depths of that luxurious chair 
and listen to compliments. 

“Marvellous! I have seen an Arab youth 
dance just like that, with that inward curving of 
the spine, but never any European. You must 
have practised a great deal.” 

“Comparatively little,” murmured Paula; 
“only just when I felt inclined.” 

Reeves noticed how pale she was looking. 
“You look worn out,” he said kindly. “Have 
some coffee or brandy and soda to pull you 
round.” 

“(ph no, thanks,” replied Pwla, hastily getting 


90 


PAum: 


up with a glance at the clock; must go — 
I’ve been here an age.” 

As she went to the door, Reeves followed her. 
All through the interview his attraction towards 
her had been growing stronger : her presence, her 
attitude in his large arm-chair, those soft, well- 
made feet on his fender-rail, her smile, her voice 
— all these had been as small draughts of stimu- 
lants to him, which a man takes without noticing 
or counting, but which work their effect all the 
same upon him. 

Paula was conscious of it, as she was conscious 
that she habitually attracted men. She had made 
no more effort to-night than she ever did, but she 
had been with him for three hours, and therefore, 
at the end, the caress in his voice, the warm pres- 
sure of his hand, the light in his eyes, all seemed 
natural to her. She was so accustomed to them 
all, she received them all from every nine men 
out of ten she came in contact with. But Reeves 
had heard the play. He had sat and listened to 
a piece such as comes once or twice perhaps into 
the hands of a manager in his whole managerial 
life — if he is lucky. The wit and the brilliance 
of it was in his ears, it seemed to fill the atmos- 
phere of the room, and gather like a glittering 
aureole round the girl’s pale and excited face, 
and the quick thrill of excitement in his veins was 
nearly outweighed by the deference for her 
genius. 

“You will consider it then,” she said, turning 


PAULA^ 


91 


at the door, ‘^and let me Know soon?” She smiled 
faintly; her eyes were full of light under their 
sweetly arched lids, her tone was appealing, her 
face, turned to him, seemed to say, “My life 
depends on you.” The excitement rushed up 
through the deference. 

Reeves took her hand again. “Yes, very soon 
— to-morrow perhaps,” he answered. “Good- 
night, dear; mayn’t I? just one.” He had slipped 
his arm round her waist, his face was close to hers, 
Paula had drawn back, very gently, but de- 
cidedly. “Just to seal our agreement about the 
play,” murmured Reeves, with his lips very close. 

Paula flushed, and the tears started to her eyes. 
The play was very dear, and she might be en- 
dangering it. “Please don’t ask me, not to- 
night,” she murmured appealingly. 

Reeves drew back at once and dropped his arm. 
“Oh, certainly not, if you don’t wish it!” he said, 
with chill formality, and elaborately opened the 
door standing at arm’s length. Paula hesitated 
an instant, then passed through the door. Reeves 
accompanied her in silence across the hall of the 
flat to the outer door, opened tliis for her, and 
stood back chillily for her to pass on to the stair- 
case. They could see straight down it and 
through the double glass doors into the street. 
The storm had increased: a perfect blizzard 
howled and raged past the well-fitting panels of 
those baize-edged doors. Nothing was visible 
but a whirling white sheet beyond the panes. The 


92 


PAULA 


air, even here on the house staircase, had an icy 
grip. The wind was audible through the solid 
walls. Reeves had meant to send the girl home 
in a hansom, with one of his rugs to help her 
miserable clothing in keeping her warm, but that 
little incident at the door had changed the tenor 
of his thoughts. He looked now at the rag- 
ing snowstorm with grim satisfaction. “Let 
her walk,” he thought, — “it will do her 
good.” 

“Good evening. Miss Heywood,” he said aloud, 
and turned back into his flat, closing the door 
quietly behind him and leaving her on the stair- 
case. 

Paula, who had known his thoughts perfectly, 
and was also accustomed to these sudden falls of 
temperature in men’s manners, smiled slightly, 
and went down and out. As she opened the doors, 
the gust of icy wind in her face almost hurled her 
backwards. She merely smiled as the snow beat 
into her face, set her teeth, and let the door swing 
to behind her on the warmth and ease and com- 
fort they guarded, and turned into the street. 
She went a few steps, staggering under the vio- 
lence of the wind, blown from one side of the 
pavement to the other, blinded by the cutting 
snow driving against her eyes. 

The wind caught her hat and wrenched at it, 
dragging it to one side; then it attacked her hair, 
not very securely done at the theatre, and pulled 
it out in loose strands across her eyes; then it 


PAULA 


93 


came under her thin cape, piercing her through to 
the heart with a deadly chill of cold, and sent her 
reeling against the ice-bound railings. She clung 
to them, panting, gasping for breath. Her weak- 
ness came suddenly home to her. How her heart 
seemed to flutter and her limbs to be like paper ! 
Would she even reach Lisle Street? “Nonsense, 
I must,” she thought, checking the spasm of fear 
that rose in her. 

She left the railings and struggled on again. 
A slight lull came in the wind, and she reached 
Piccadilly in safety. The snow was now thick on 
the pavements, and her feet, chilled through and 
through in the old shoes, ached with the cold. 
Very few people seemed out, here at the top of 
Piccadilly. A man passed at intervals with his 
collar turned up, hat pressed on his eyes, and 
hands deep in his pockets, that was all. Feeling 
an intolerable faintness grow upon her with each 
step, Paula stumbled on painfully, and gradually 
got down towards . the bottom of the incline. 
There were more people here and more light, and 
as she approached the Piccadilly Club a warm 
pulse beat through her cold sick misery. “Dear 
Vincent,” she murmured involuntarily, as she 
saw the warm light from the Club windows pour 
out into the snow-laden air. The wind seemed 
suddenly to gain a fresh access of fury as she 
came up to the Club, the snow beat and whirled 
and surged wildly in it. Paula felt with terror 
her strength was ebbing, a strange breathless 


94 


PAULA 


dizziness was coming over her. How cold, oh how 
bitterly cold it was! a darkness greater than the 
darkness of the night was closing in, her heart 
seemed leaping in her throat, her limbs had no 
feeling, she tottered, stretched her hand blindly 
to the railing, missed it, staggered, and fell sense- 
less in the snow. 

About the same time that Paula left Reeves, 
Vincent had entered his Club to inquire for let- 
ters, and, finding one or two of importance, 
stayed there to read them. He stopped there 
reading and then considering them, till the clock 
struck the half-hour past seven, then he remem- 
bered he was going out to dinner. He had his 
coat brought, and prepared to leave. As, with 
his collar well turned up, and his gloved hands in 
his pockets, he signed from the Club steps to a 
passing hansom, his eye caught sight of a small 
crowd of people standing in the driving snow 
round some object on the ground. 

“Pore thing, she’s dead most like,” he heard 
one old woman mutter to herself as she turned 
from the group, shivering herself, and hurried 
away into the darkness. 

Vincent, who always allowed himself to be in- 
fluenced easily where a woman was in question, 
sauntered down the steps to the crowd, while the 
hansom waited at the kerb. 

Two men were just lifting a limp black figure 
from the ground; the head dragged heavily back- 
ward, the hat had fallen off, and a mass of turn- 


PAULA 


95 


bled yellow hair and a stone-white face caught 
the light from the Club window. 

“God in heaven!” ejaculated Vincent, as his 
eyes fell upon it, “Paula!” The men who had 
lifted her looked up, every face in the little knot 
I of figures turned to him. They were all poor, 
common people, and they stared at Vincent’s tall 
well-dressed figure sprung suddenly amongst 
them, and the white horror of his face. 

“Do you know the young woman, sir?” said 
the man who was supporting Paula’s shoulder; 
her arm dropped nerveless to the ground, the 
lovely hand lay upturned, livid in the snow. 

“Yes,” returned Vincent, briefiy, forcing his 
way to her side. “Here, my men, lift her up on to 
; those steps while I get some brandy.” 

“Too much of that on board already, I should 
say,” remarked a loafer at his side with a grin. 
Vincent’s eyes met his. He walked at him as the 
man stood in his way, and rolled him backward 
into the gutter. Vincent sprang up the steps and 
into the Club as the men carried Paula with dif- 
ficulty, in the teeth of the raging blizzard, after 
him. His heart seemed breaking with pity. 
“Poor little girl,” he muttered, “poor dear little 
girl.” He got the brandy in a glass from one. 
! of the stewards, and hurried back to her. One 
of the roughs was supporting her head on his 
. arm, kneeling on the upper step. The other stood 
i by holding her shapeless hat and turning it nerv- 
ously in his hands; the remaining people, whose 


96 


PAULA 


curiosity was sufficient to dull their sense of cold, 
stood round the bottom of the steps, staring open- 
mouthed. Vincent went down on his knees, raised 
her head on his own arm, and put the brandy to 
her lips. A little ran over them and fell down 
the pale cheeks ; her teeth were clenched, hard and 
immovable. Vincent saw nothing would pass 
them. He looked up, half inclined to summon a 
doctor, then his eye fell on the increasing knot 
of figures at the foot of the steps. A policeman 
had strolled up by this time, and was standing 
looking over their heads at all the proceedings 
with judicial gravity, while the snow piled itself 
on his helmet. On the other side of him he was 
conscious of the grinning waiters staring through 
the glass, and he thought he caught the voice of 
a man he knew demanding his coat preparatory 
to coming out. 

“Shall I fetch a doctor, sir?” volunteered one 
of the men, in an awed voice he thought suited to 
the blue tint of the upturned face. 

“No,” said Vincent sharply, anxious to get 
away from this theatrical publicity; “I’ll take her 
to her own home,” and he stopped over the pulse- 
less figure and lifted it, and went down the steps 
to the cab. 

“He knows ’er pretty well, don’t ’ee?” grinned 
one man to the other as he followed with the hat. 

Vincent pushed decisively through the loafers 
and past the policeman, who only stood and 
stared stolidly in the driving wind. .The cabman 


PAULA 


97 

had jumped from his seat, and offered to hold 
her if Vincent got in first. He sprang in, and 
then between the two men the girl’s nerveless 
body was put inside ; the little feet dragged upon 
the step, and cabby had to press them up with his 
hands. Vincent took the head on his breast, and 
put both arms round her. “Lisle Street,” he 
called to the cabman, and gave the number. 
Cabby clambered to his box, and the cab whirled 
away rapidly through the sheets of blinding snow. 

“Darling! darling!” murmured Vincent, be- 
side himself with distress, lifting her head higher 
on to his breast, and pressing his lips down on 
hers. Just as they turned the corner of Leicester 
Street, she stirred a little in his arms, and he saw 
her eyes open and felt her shiver. 

“What has happened?” she murmured vaguely. 

“You fainted, darling; but you are safe now, 
safe in my arms, and close at home.” Paula drew 
a long, gasping breath, her head fell back, and 
she drifted away into unconsciousness again. 

When the landlady appeared at the door, in 
answer to the cabman’s knock, Vincent beckoned 
to her. The woman, impressed by the sight of 
Vincent’s silk hat and high white collar, which 
she caught a glimpse of through the glass, lum- 
bered across the pavement in the snow. 

“Sakes alive!” she exclaimed, on seeing the 
limp form and death-like face within. “What- 
ever’s happened to her?” 

Vincent flung open both doors, and with great 


98 


PAULA 


difficulty managed to put the girl into the cab- 
man’s arms, while the woman supported her feet, 
that had banged against the step before, to Vin- 
cent’s distress. When the trio had reached the 
hall, Vincent took her again himself, and sent the 
cabman to fetch the nearest doctor. 

“Which is her room?” he asked the landlady as 
he went up the stairs, with the woman following 
him. 

“Over the drawing-room, sir, at the back,” she 
answered, and they mounted the stairs in silence. 

Through all his anxiety and distress a faint 
feeling of pleasure passed into Vincent’s mind at 
the thought of seeing her room, and being privi- 
leged to enter it. At the head of the stairs he 
paused: they were in pitch blackness, and he did 
not know where the door was. The landlady fum- 
bled in her pocket for the matches, and then 
hastily pushed past him, opened a door, and 
struck a light. She lighted a candle on the 
mantelpiece, and as it flared up Vincent followed 
her into the room. It struck him as painfully 
small and poor, with its sloping roof ; but the bed 
in the corner was a pretty spot in it. He walked 
to it and laid her on it. 

“Is Mr. Heywood in?” he asked. 

“No, sir.” 

“Have you any brandy in the house?” 

“Yes, sir; they ’as some in their own cupboard,” 
the woman answered glibly. She knew exactly 
where that brandy was situated. 


PAULA 


og 

“111 go downstairs for it. I would undress her 
at once and put her into bed, and cover her up 
well,” Vincent said. “Do that at once, will you?” 
he added sharply, as the woman stood looking 
rather helpless, and he disappeared. It only took 
him a few minutes to run down the stairs and 
find the cupboard in the unlighted room below. 
He got out the bottle and bounded up the stairs 
again. The landlady had succeeded in loosening 
Paula’s clothing, and drawing off her wet skirt. 
Underneath this she had unexpectedly come upon 
the beautiful Liberty silk, and stripped it off with 
impatient fingers. “Makin’ out they’re so poor 
and dressin’ up like this,” she muttered con- 
temptuously, flinging the dress, now a good deal 
crushed and tumbled, on the foot of the bed. 
Then she dragged the blankets and quilt over her 
and as Vincent re-entered, stood panting from 
her exertions. 

He came over to the bed — ^the white face and 
tumbled hair lay motionless on the pillow. Her 
teeth were not so tightly clenched as in the former 
faint. Vincent bent over her and poured some of 
the brandy between her lips. She stirred a little, 
and the lips parted easily now and her eyelashes 
quivered. “That is better,” he murmured, in a 
relieved tone. “Can’t you light a fire?” he said, 
looking up at the woman, who stood beside him 
staring solemnly; “this room’s freezing,” and he 
shivered in his overcoat. 

“I don’t know as this grate’ll burn,” returned 


100 


PAULA 


the woman, going sullenly over to it; “I don’t 
know as it doesn’t smoke.” 

“Light it and see,” said Vincent shortly from 
the bed. The helpless disbelief of this class of 
person in their own and everybody else’s capacity 
to do anything needful, always annoyed his will- 
ing, independent spirit. 

“Well, sir,” rejoined a complaining voice from 
the hearth, “I’ve no one to help me; my servant’s 
out, and I’m not accustomed to be asked ter do 
such things at this time of night, when I’m 
dressed and all, with the coals and the sticks in 
the cellar, right away downstairs.” 

Vincent straightened himself and stood up by 
the bedside, setting the brandy on the table be- 
side him, and looked down upon the woman with, 
as she said afterwards, “quite a nasty flash in 
his eyes.” “The fire must be hghted,” he said, 
“so there is an end to it. If you won’t do it, I 
will.” The landlady gazed at him in blank aston- 
ishment. The tall, slim figure in the long coat 
looked very commanding standing there. His 
silk hat almost touched the sloping beam against 
the ceiling. He gave her one second in which to 
answer, then seeing her still hesitate, and feeling 
a shiver run up through the form on the bed, he 
snatched up the second candlestick from the man- 
telpiece and lighted it. “Kindly stay here, then,” 
he said sharply, as he went out. The landlady, 
feeling half resentful, half overawed, stood a few 
minutes where he had left her^ and then began 


PAULA 


101 


thudding round the room with her heavy tread, 
unnecessarily putting things straight, and making 
a vulgar neatness speaking of herself, out of the 
beautiful confusion that spoke of Paula. The 
form on the bed shivered, and, for want of more 
brandy, lapsed again into insensibility. 

Vincent found his way, with light feet, to the 
very bottom of the house, and groped along a 
stone passage, which he judged might lead to the 
cellar beneath the steps. He came across an old 
basket on his way there, and this, when he reached 
the cellar, he balanced on the coals and proceeded 
to fill it. There seemed no shovel, so he gathered 
together the most promising lumps with his 
fingers. Then he found his way carefully back to 
the kitchen, and looked about for the wood. A 
pile of bundles happened to be standing behind 
the kitchen door. He took a whole one, and a 
newspaper that was screwed in the corner of the 
fender. All went into the basket on his arm, and 
he turned to go upstairs. Only perhaps five 
minutes altogether had elapsed before he re- 
entered Paula’s room. 

The landlady, who had taken a chair at the foot 
of the bed, gasped when she saw him come in with 
hex’ vegetable basket full of coals. He took no 
notice of her, but set the coals by the grate, and 
then approached the bed. It was close to the 
window, and an icy draught from without blew 
upon him and it. He looked at the covering for 
a minute and then felt it. It consisted of two 


102 


PAULA 


very thin blankets and a worn cotton quilt. Vin- 
cent unfastened his overcoat and then drew it off. 
It was warm through with his own warmth. He 
laid it over the girl, pressing it close round her 
shoulders. The woman watched liim stolidly, 
more impressed than ever now by his evening 
dress and expanse of shirt front. 

“Have you taken off her shoes?” he asked sud- 
denly, turning on her. 

She mumbled apologetically that she had for- 
gotten it. 

Vincent volunteered nothing; he merely told 
her to get up and let him come to the foot of the 
bed. Paula’s two little feet, in their soddened, 
muddy shoes, lay together, limp and ice-cold, 
between the blankets. He drew both shoes and 
stockings off, and held the frozen feet for a min- 
ute in his warm hands. Work and love and anger 
sent the blood quickly and hotly along his veins. 
He laid the little feet back in the blanket, some- 
what warmed by the contact of his hand, and 
covered them over. Then he crossed to the hearth 
and knelt down on it to light up the fire. He 
had just stuffed in the paper and laid the wood 
when there was a peremptory tap at the door, and 
immediately after the doctor came in. 

He was a short man with a pompous dignity 
in every line of his face and form. He stopped 
short just inside the door, at the sight of Vincent’s 
elegant figure in his evening dress kneeling be- 
fore the grate. 


PAULA 


103 


“Come in,” said Vincent, with the least trace 
of impatience in his voice, and going on rapidly 
with his work. “Your patient is on the bed. She 
fainted and fell on the pavement about an hour 
ago. She came to as I brought her home and 
fainted again, but not so deeply. It has seemed 
more a stupor than a faint since.” 

By this time Vincent had put a match to the 
paper, and the fire was so scientifically laid, and 
vdth such an abundant supply of wood that it 
caught, and a broad sheet of flame went crackling 
up the chimney. 

“Enough to set it afire,” remarked the land- 
lady, coming over to the rug; “and not swept 
this nine years.” 

Vincent had risen to his feet and gone over to 
where the doctor stood looking down on the bed. 
He had one of Paula’s hands in his, his fingers 
on the wrist, and glanced at the watch in his 
other hand. He looked up as Vincent ap- 
proached. 

“The cabman desires to be paid,” he said 
merely, in solemn tones. 

“The cabman,” echoed Vincent, for a minute 
not knowing what he meant. Then he glanced at 
the unwieldy form of the landlady. Should he 
send her down — no, quicker to go himself. In the 
hall he found the cabman. Their colloquy was 
short, and Vincent was soon back in the top room. 

“Well, how is she?” he asked as he came into 
it. The fire was blazing away merrily, and the 


104 


PAULA 


little place many degrees warmer now than when 
he had entered it at first. 

“There’s nothing at all the matter that I can 
discover,” said the doctor, speaking gravely with 
pursed-up lips. “It is simply a case of inanition. 
I should say she has had no food for several hours, 
and that combined vith the cold has produced 
collapse. She wants food now, food and wine, 
and watching.” 

“What sort of food,” demanded Vincent — 
“beef-tea?” 

“Yes,” said the doctor, “beef -tea would be 
excellent, and wine or brandy at intervals. She 
shouldn’t be left alone without stimulants through 
the night. The fire should be kept up, and some 
one should watch her and be ready with nourish- 
ment at the least sign of faintness. She seems to 
me to have been overstrained — she’s low, and the 
action of the heart very weak. Coma in a low 
temperature in her state might be, well” — with 
a shrug of his shoulders — “fatal; she should be 
watched.” 

“I understand,” said Vincent thoughtfully. 
He stood silent for a second or two thinking. He 
had had no time till now to remember his own 
engagements. They flashed upon him now; he 
must send a note to the people he had disap- 
pointed at dinner, and for the other — should he 
be wanted here through the night? 

May I ask, said the doctor, looking round 
superciliously at the silk-lined overcoat on the 


PAULA 


105 


bed, at the hat on the chair, at Vincent’s own 
figure, and the mark the grate bars had left on 
his otherwise immaculate shirt-cuff, “if you — er 
— intend to stay yourself?” What was this 
whole little business? he wondered. 

“Well,” Vincent said simply, “the fact is I was 
just going out to dinner when all this happened. 
She fainted just outside my Club, and I’m due 
now elsewhere,” he added, pulling out his watch 
and looking at it. “But nothing is of any conse- 
quence except securing her getting round. If 
you say she can’t be left I must stay till — ^When’s 
Mr. Hey wood coming back?” he said suddenly, 
turning towards the woman at the hearth. 

“Not till to-morrow mornin’ ; ’ee’s gorn into the 
country,” returned the woman rather spitefully. 

Vincent hesitated. He raised his eyebrows 
significantly at the doctor and went to the door; 
the doctor followed him, and when the two men 
were outside, Vincent said: “That woman is a 
perfect fool, and will do nothing, and the girl’s 
brother’s away. I can stay myself with her till 
to-morrow morning and watch her, if you could 
kindly send in the things you think necessary.” 

The doctor came down a little from his throne 
of pomposity and promised to see the things w’^ere 
sent ; and in a few minutes Vincent came back to 
deal with the landlady. Her fat, loud-breathing 
presence in the room annoyed him, and, as she had 
evidently no intention of being more than orna- 
mental, he thought he could dispense with her 


106 


paul:^ 


altogether. The landlady had some scruples as to 
the respectability of the whole proceedings, but 
Vincent was so dictatorial, so “barefaced,” as she 
put it, that her moral courage ebbed before him, 
and at last she lumbered out of the room and 
down the stairs, muttering “she’d never known 
such goin’s on in all her born days.” Vincent, 
left in possession upstairs, looked round the little 
room and over the sweet unconscious figure on the 
bed, with a thrill of keen feeling. 

Half-an-hour later Eliza, the servant, came up, 
round-eyed with astonishment, bringing a tray of 
parcels from the chemist’s and grocer’s. Vincent 
had his kettle boiling, and in three minutes was 
carrying a cup of beef -tea to the bed. Paula lay 
in a conscious stupor; but he roused her enough 
to drink the contents of the cup. She opened her 
eyes dreamily upon him. “How delightful it is 
to be with you!” she murmured. Then she closed 
them again with a sigh. 

Vincent flushed with pleasure, took the cup 
from her, and went back to the hearth. The 
doctor had said she was to sleep if she could, and 
only be roused if her lips seemed growing white. 
Vincent sat and watched her, while the little clock 
on the mantelpiece ticked away the seconds. 

At intervals he went to look at her. Twice she 
was too white to please him, and he got her to 
swallow some brandy, and brought the colour 
back. At two o’clock the cold seemed to intensify, 
and he went to her again. No ; she was not white 


PAULA 


107 


now. The face glowed like delicate, rose-tinted 
porcelain. She seemed to feel his presence and 
his gaze, for her eyes opened. She looked up at 
him. She was not very clear; the returning 
warmth and sleepiness made everything confused, 
in a pleasant confusion. Vincent looked down on 
her. 

“Are you warm now?” he asked. 

“Yes; deliciously warm,” she murmured. 

Vincent put his hand in under the blankets 
round her neck. “Yes, you are,” he said, with- 
drawing it, and covering her close to the chin. 
“Keep so, and go to sleep.” He was turning 
away, but she murmured his name. It was just a 
soft whisper. Her cheeks were flushed now, her 
lips warm and red, her eyes bright, though 
suffused with drowsy, semi -unconsciousness. 
She realised nothing except that he was 
there. 

“What is it?” asked Vincent. 

“Kiss me,” she murmured, and Vincent bent 
down and kissed her, with his heart beating. 

“Good-night, dear,” he said gently, and the 
extreme softness and gentleness of his voice acted 
like a soothing spell upon her tired brain, and 
lulled it into sleep again. Vincent went over 
to the hearth, took the one high cane chair there 
was, and stretched out his legs wearily to the 
fender. He felt very tired himself now, cold 
without his coat in the draughty room, and faint 
for want of food. He had had nothing to eat 


108 


PAULA 


since his luncheon that day at one. He glanced 
at the beef -tea jar on the mantelpiece, but some- 
how felt too worn out to be at the trouble of 
making it for himself. He folded his arms on 
his chest to keep his hands warm, and let his head 
sink forward, and his eyehds over his eyes. It 
got colder momentarily, and the temperature in 
the room sank, though the fire burned well. Vin- 
cent coughed several times and turned uneasily, 
as he dozed on the hard chair. 

Towards eight o’clock in the morning the light 
began to struggle into the room. The snow that 
lay on all outside lent its reflection, and the room 
grew light rapidly. Paula stirred in her sleep, 
then opened her eyes and looked round. Invig- 
orated by the food and the brandy, and the long 
unbroken rest, she felt well — quite well ; and with 
her brain clear now, and only her memory of last 
night at fault, she gazed about her. The table 
beside her of bottles and glasses and cups, the 
coat over her, Vincent’s motionless figure in the 
chair by the hearth, told her this much at once: 
she had been ill ; he had stayed with her and been 
nursing her. A warm glow ran through her; she 
almost trembled with the quick thrill of loving, 
affectionate gratitude that penetrated her. 

“Vincent,” she said softly, raising herself on 
one elbow. The motionless figure did not stir. 
Paula slipped out of bed, and with her bare feet 
crossed to him. The piled-up fire was still burn- 
ing steadily, but Paula felt how cold the air was 


PAULiV: 


100 


in spite of it. She stood for a second or so rub- 
bing one little foot over the other, and looking 
down upon him. Then she dropped on one knee 
beside him, and put her arms round without 
touching him, and let her hands rest at the back 
of his chair, that she might lean forward and look 
into his face. She was always a little, just a very 
little — well, not afraid of him, but timid with him 
when they were together ordinarily, and now it 
was so delightful to have him like this so com- 
pletely in her possession, so unconsciously, so 
helplessly for those few minutes her own. 

She noticed his evening dress, and her eye 
passed over him and rested on the white cards 
that stuck out of his breast pocket. By his atti- 
tude, as he had fallen more into sleep and sunk 
more forward, the cards had been forced half 
out of his pocket, and Paula could recognise them 
as invitation cards: on the foremost of one she 
could read “Lady Sandhurst” and “pleasure” and 
“company” and “dinner.” The other was a simi- 
lar card with a different writing, doubtless a 
second invitation. Paula’s sensitive eyes glowed 
and lighted as she looked, then she glanced 
round. No sign of any dinner for him here: then 
her eyes came back to him; she noticed the coal- 
dust on his cuffs and hands. 

Paula leaned yet a little more forward and 
gazed into the unconscious face. Its bloodless- 
ness and the fine carving of its lines reminded her 
of a statue. The cold morning light striking; 


110 


PAULA 


across it made it very grey; the cheeks were pale; 
the whole face looked tired and haggard. He 
was sleeping quite silently with his mouth tightly 
closed and lips compressed. That moment, in- 
significant and commonplace as it seemed, was 
the greatest, psychologically, of her life. In that 
moment when she knelt there with her bare feet 
on the bare floor of the attic, looking into his 
face, the great admiration within her was joined 
suddenly by a great gratitude, and from the union 
of these two her love, a devoted passionate love, 
sprang into being. The grey light came in and 
embraced them both. The unconscious, wearied, 
sleeping figure of the man, and the ardent, in- 
tensely living form and just-awakened face of the 
girl kneeling there with her bare white arms 
locked round him, her hair falling on her shoul- 
ders, the linen loose and open at her neck, and 
her eyes upraised, full of the brightest of all 
dawns. “My life, if ever you need it,’’ she mur- 
mured. There was only a grey, light quietness 
round them. No eye and no ear witnessed the 
vow. Vincent stirred slightly. Did there come 
to him any touch of dim consciousness that his 
future was balanced and decided in that moment ? 

Paula, remembering suddenly her half-dressed 
condition, rose hastily as he moved and retreated 
to the bed. She had got in and drawn up the 
clothes just as he lifted his head and uncrossed 
his stiffened arms. His first glance was towards 
the bed. 


PAULA 


111 


‘‘Well, how do you feel now?” he said, smiling. 

“Quite well; how good you were to me last 
night!” 

“I could hardly do less, dear,” returned Vin- 
cent. “I should think you’re ready for some 
breakfast, aren’t you?” He stirred the fire into 
a blaze, and set the kettle on. 

“The coffee’s downstairs in the cupboard where 
you found the brandy,” volunteered Paula, feel- 
ing a delight in this humble domesticity shared 
with him. What would poverty or any exterior 
circumstance matter if one possessed this fund 
of pleasure in a companion’s presence? The 
young fellow’s face and figure furnished this poor 
little room better than all the upholsterers in 
London could have done. 

“I’ll go and fetch it,” he answered, and went 
out and down the narrow dark stairs that he felt 
quite familiar with since last night. 

About nine o’clock Charlie reached Lisle 
Street, and went straight up to his sister’s room, 
just glancing into the sitting-room on his way up. 
As he pushed the door open, the sound of laugh- 
ter reached him, the blazing light of the fire, and 
the scent of toast and coffee. He came in, and 
then stopped in blank amazement on the thresh- 
old. Paula was a little raised in the bed, lean- 
ing on one doubled white arm, her light hair flow- 
ing in ruffled waves over the pillow propped up 
behind her. Beyond Vincent’s pallid, tired looks 
there, was nothing to suggest illness pf either. 


114 


PAULA 


powerless shade, hurried on to destruction or 
borne aloft in safety, impelled to virtue or 
dragged into vice and misery and shame, just 
as his own ever-accompanying black- winged Des- 
tiny decided? 


V 


“So that’s your decision? You will only produce 
it on those terms?” 

It was Paula’s voice spealdng. She was lean- 
ing against the wall of Reeves’s drawing-room, 
looking up at him as he stood facing her. The 
electric light shone down on her; she was very 
pale, and her eyes had a tired, disappointed look 
in them. Reeves looked down upon her in silence, 
fumbhng with the roll of her manuscript. There 
was a httle garnet brooch at her neck. His eye 
rested on it mechanically, and saw how her heart- 
beats made it rise and fall. It crossed his mind 
then that he was doing an unwise action. That 
which has been accursed since the world began — 
bargaining for a human hfe. “Let her go,” said a 
voice within him; “take the work, and let her go.” 

“Is it such a very hard condition?” he mur- 
mured, after a minute. 

“Not in itself,” returned Paula; “not to many 
women — perhaps not to me under other circum- 
stances, but I’m given over to another. Surely 
you would not want to marry me, would you, 
knowing that?” 

“What can the other fellow do for you?” said 
Reeves, evasively. “Can he give you what I can? 
— ^wealth, fame, everything?” 


116 


PAULA 


‘‘No,” answered Paula, quietly; '‘not any- 
thing; but love isn’t bought by gifts.” 

There was silence, in which Reeves looked at 
her. It was a pity that in those moments her face 
could show no lines, only its youthful whiteness, 
to the searching light. It was a pity that the 
figure had such grace, as she leant wearily against 
the wall. In those moments her youth and at- 
tractiveness took up arms with Reeves against 
her, and she was helpless before them. Gifts, as 
she had said, are the handicap on the race of 
life. 

“No,” he said, suddenly turning away from 
her, “there is no other condition. As my wife. 
I’ll bring out the play for you — give you a public 
and a future. If you won’t accept these terms, 
I have no others to offer,” and he flung the roll 
of paper on the table. “You won’t get any other 
manager to take it,” he said, after a minute, as 
she did not speak, only leant there watching with 
absent eyes the stiff paper on the table slowly 
uncurl itself hke a living thing. “You have gifts, 
but that play’s very peculiar and rather risky. 
I see it, only I’m willing to take the risk, and I 
believe you’ll be very great; but I don’t know 
who else in all London except myself would 
chance it.” 

Paula still stood silent. A sense of helpless- 
ness, a weariness of everything, came over her. 
Here was her desire given into her hand. She 
would be very great. All her dreams, her vague 


PAULA 


117 


hopes, her longings of years past, were here crys- 
tallised into tangible form and pressed upon her, 
but now weighted with a condition that rendered 
them worthless. 

Reeves walked about the room nervously, then 
came up to her. ‘Why, my dear little girl, how 
can you hesitate?” he said kindly,^ taking one 
nerveless hand in his and holding it. “Don’t you 
understand how much I can do for you? I tell 
you, you’ll have all London at your feet, and by 
this time next year your name will be known 
pretty well all over the world.” 

He saw he had touched one right note at any 
rate. Her eyes gleamed as he spoke, and her 
lips quivered. No more obscurity and nonentity, 
no more to walk in the streets a mere insignificant 
little unit of the crowd, with all her powers locked 
within her own brain, where they fought and 
struggled vainly, destroying themselves and her. 
Here would be life at last, life for herself, and 
immortality perhaps for her work. 

“Oh, Reeves,” she said, suddenly clasping his 
hand with both of hers, “do take it. I don’t 
want any of the money that may come from it. 
Take all the profits from it for yourself, only 
produce it and let me act in it. Don’t ask me to 
tie myself. Don’t tempt me to marry you. I 
can’t ever love you, I feel I ought not to marry 
you. It would be a crime. I am as good as 
married to somebody else.” 

Reeves’s face grew cold as he listened, and he 


118 


PAULA 


withdrew his hand. He felt the intense love for 
her work which underlay the words. He heard 
the accent of fear with which she begged him not 
to tempt her. He felt sure with a little diplomacy 
he could twist her to his own wishes. She was 
weak, helpless, blind in the intoxication of her 
great desire, and he saw it. 

“I can’t alter what I have already said, if we 
argue over it for a week. Perhaps, if you feel 
so strongly about the matter, you had better take 
back your play and see what you can do with it 
yourself.” 

Paula was unnerved, as a mother who sees her 
child in danger. She drew herself up from her 
leaning attitude and looked Reeves full in the 
face with her steady brilliant eyes. His shifted 
and fell, and moved uneasily under them. 

“Then you want to marry me, knowing I con- 
sent only for the play, that I can’t ever care for 
you, and that my whole soul is given to another?” 

“Yes,” said Reeves, sullenly. 

There was a long silence, in which Reeves fid- 
geted about the room, wondering what she was 
thinking of. Then he came up and stood in 
front of her. 

“Wouldn’t you like to have your own victoria 
and drive out in it shopping every afternoon? 
Have nothing to do all day but amuse yourself? 
Drive in the Park, and have everybody turn their 
heads to look after you? Wouldn’t that be nice, 
Oir 


PAULA 


119 


Paula raised her eyes to him. To her, Vin- 
cent’s figure seemed standing between them. 
“Very,” she answered coldly, and Reeves saw she 
was unmoved. 

“Then you need only work so little,” he re- 
sumed; “all the summer we would take for our- 
selves. You have only to say what you would 
like, to have it — a villa on one of the Italian 
lakes, or a yacht to go cruising in the South seas. 
Surely it’s not a very terrible prospect?” 

Her eyes were still on his — an absent look came 
into them. All the pictures that his words un- 
folded before her seemed barren and dark, devoid 
of sunlight, as if he had conjured up for her a 
trip to the Arctic Ocean; and then, so strangely 
does the brain work sometimes, she seemed to see 
a prison rise before her in imagination, a convict 
yard with rows of chained, blistered human beings 
bending to their labour under the brazen beams of 
a pitiless sun. Somehow she felt to herself that 
she was there, chained and bowed, thirsty and 
suffering, with blistered, bleeding limbs, and 
yet happy, divinely, satisfyingly happy, for be- 
side her, working also in the glare, its shadow 
falling on her, was the figure that stood between 
herself and Reeves. Her whole nature cried out 
in the vision. The Italian lake, the Southern 
seas, Reeves’s villa and his yacht, were to her 
blank and cheerless; while a prison, desert, or 
grave shared with this other seemed homes of pas- 
sionate pleasure. 


120 


PAULA 


“No,” she said suddenly, “I can’t do it. I am 
not free to marry you.” She made a movement 
as if to leave altogether ; her face was determined. 
Reeves turned pale, and looked helplessly about 
the room, as if seeking some inspiration. His eye 
fell suddenly on the play itself lying on the table. 
He picked it up. 

“Well, wait one moment,” he said. “Come and 
sit down just for a few minutes, and let me read 
you something here, and see then if you have the 
heart to bury it in some back cupboard at home.” 

“What’s the good? I must know my own 
play, surely?” said Paula, amused and light- 
hearted again, as she felt her decision was made. 

“Well, never mind; just to please me. Come.” 
He wheeled forward the deep, comfortable arm- 
chair she had sat in that first night at his rooms. 
Paula, always willing to oblige every one where 
possible, cast herself into it, clasping each arm of 
it lightly in her smooth, soft hands, and looking 
over at Reeves with unconcealed derision. 
Reeves, unmoved, seated himself in his chair and 
opened the MS. in the middle, and began to read. 
He had a large, supple, sympathetic voice, ad- 
mirably adapted to reading aloud, and here he 
exerted his skill to the utmost. It was his last 
chance, and he meant to win. 

He read on. There was complete silence in the 
room, and the clever sentences went through it 
like the passes of polished rapiers. After a time 
he stopped suddenly and looked up. The girl 


PAULA 


121 


had sunk back in the chair, her eyelids were 
closed, she was deathly pale, and breathing heav- 
ily. Her heart gave great bounds at irregular 
intervals, one hand had slipped from the chair 
arm and hung quivering to the floor; her whole 
body was tense and trembling. It was the 
physical expression of the agony of the inward 
struggle. 

“Paula!’’ 

She opened her eyes. “Yes.” 

“Is it to live? Shall I produce it?” 

The girl sprang to her feet; her eyes flamed 
out of the sick, exhausted pallor of her face. 
“Yes,” she said, “produce it.” 

“Then you will marry me?” 

“I suppose so.” 

“Darling!” exclaimed Reeves. He got up, 
seized both her hands, drew her into his arms, and 
kissed her. Paula shivered, and submitted pas- 
sively. It seemed to herself she had stepped 
forward in the darkness, and slipped and fallen 
suddenly on the miry ground of prostitution. 

At close upon eleven o’clock a knock came to 
the door of Vincent’s flat. Vincent himself was 
on the point of going to bed. He had returned 
not more than half-an-hour before from a big 
dinner, where he had been greatly bored. The 
stillness of his rooms seemed to oppress him, and 
he determined to turn in and sleep. He was in 
his bedroom when he heard that knock fall on his 
door. He paused in the centre of the room with 


122 


PAULA 


a slight smile. He recognised it directly. It was 
Paula’s knock; imperious, impetuous, like none 
other that ever came there. He smiled, thinking 
how almost any other woman coming at that com- 
promising hour would have tried to modify their 
knock and veil their coming, if ever so slightly; 
but that was not Paula. He rather liked her for 
her want of care for herself and her reputation. 
It gave him more to take care of. Thinking of 
this now, he laid down his watch he was just pre- 
paring to wind, and crossed himself to the outer 
door and opened it to her. She came past him 
quickly, and went by like a flash into his sitting- 
room. He relocked the door quietly; then he 
followed her back into his room and shut the 
door. 

Paula came up and seized both his hands. 
“Tell me you’re not angry with me for coming! 
You don’t mind my coming, do you?” she said 
imploringly, eagerly, in excited entreaty. 

“No, of course I am not; why should I be?” 
returned Vincent in his softest voice, drawing the 
pliable flgure, that was trembling all over, into 
his arms, and kissing her on the mouth, waves of 
delight coursing through his blood as he felt this 
living joy at his breast. He waited for her to 
speak; but Paula lay silent in his arms, in that 
soft, seducing, caressing, tender embrace. 

Then suddenly she tore herself out of his arms. 
“Vincent, don’t, don’t; I have promised to marry 
him!’’ Vincent drew away from her a few steps 


PAULA 


123 


and looked at her in silence. The slight, elegant 
figure, the unmoved face, with its dark eyebrows 
and grave eyes she was accustomed to see 
soften for her, swam before her sight, and seemed 
to gather into them all that was of account to her 
in this life. Her eyelids quivered with a rush of 
fresh tears, and the next moment she had thrown 
herself down along the ground, and her soft cheek 
and lips were pressed upon his feet. Nobody but 
Paula could have done it, but to her the action 
was easy, natural; her fiexible body had been 
trained to express emotions, as a voice or face, 
and the action, which with almost any other 
woman would have been theatrical, affected, 
awkward, or absurd, was with her simple and 
beautiful, because so absolutely natural. Vin- 
cent thought he had never seen anything so inim- 
itably graceful as the fall and the figure that lay 
upon the ground. And was another man — ? 
The thought went into him like a dagger. 

‘‘Oh, do forgive me,” she sobbed; “don’t look 
at me like that. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do 
it.” He felt her hot lips and the pressure of her 
cheek on his instep. He bent down and lifted 
her under her arms, and drew her up to him. 
Then he sat down in one of the huge purple chairs, 
and gathered her into his arms and pressed her 
head upon his shoulder. 

“You are angry with me?” 

“No, not angry, only surprised.” 

'‘Do you care whether I marry or not?’’ 


124 


PAULA 


A feverish tightening of his arms about her 
was the only response. “Who is the man? ’ he 
asked, after a minute. 

“Reeves.’' 

“I should feel I ought not to stand in the way 
of any one who would marry you,” he said con- 
strainedly. 

“Oh, Vincent, it isn’t that at all. It’s for the 
play!” 

“What play?” 

“Why, mine; he will produce it, make me, give 
me to the world, if — if I marry him.” 

“I see, it’s a trade,” rejoined Vincent, with a 
slight bitter smile. 

“Yes; tell me what I am to do.” 

Her soft lips were in his neck, one hand, burn- 
ing and trembling, pressed his cheek and tried to 
turn his averted face to hers. 

“I can’t, not at once in this way. I must have 
time to think.” 

“I thought it was all settled,” she said, lying 
with a sort of despairing passivity in his arms, 
and pushing the hair back from her forehead. 
“When I had his note saying he had accepted it, 
and I was to go and see him, I was so happy. I 
thought I was free, that it would be a great suc- 
cess, and after its run here you would take me 
touring with it in the provinces. You would have 
done that, wouldn’t you?” She turned a little 
in his clasp, easily as a child turns in its bed, and 
raised her face upwards to him. 


PAULA 


125 


‘‘Yes,” murmured Vincent from between his 
compressed lips. 

“I wanted my liberty so much. There’s no 
liberty where there’s poverty, but this will be 
only exchanging the tie of poverty for the tie of 
I marriage.” 

There was silence in the room, then, following 
her last word, Vincent held her to him, sitting 
silent and motionless, while a tide of feelings he 
hardly recognised, and to which he could not 
give a name, seemed to sweep across him. It 
always needs a rival to teach a man how much he 
loves a woman. Her own virtue, her own charm, 
her own sweetness, has not one-tenth the power 
to rouse his passions as the approach of another 
: man. Paula, living close to him, loving him, de- 
i voted solely to him, Avith all her powers of at- 
I traction could not move Vincent as these words 
: of Reeves and marriage on her li]DS. Women 
i value men according to their own desire for them. 

! Men value women according to the desire of 
others for them. 

“Let me get up,” said Paula, after a minute, in 
a stifled voice. “In your arms I can think of 
1 nothing but you ; and I must, I must try to think 
' what I’m to do. Let me go.” 

Vincent released her, and she got up and took 
[ her place in the chair opposite him and leant 
i towards the fire. She shivered and looked white 
i and ill. 

i “You see,” she said, “It’s a great chance for 


126 


PAULA 


me, a great opening, and perhaps the only one. 
I have tried to get my plays accepted in the 
ordinary way, but no one will look at them and 
consider them. Here, in this case. Reeves will 
simply make me ; he will produce the play in the 
best possible way, under the best conditions, and 
I have the principal part in it. He says I have 
exceptional talent, that I shall be a great success, 
the success perhaps of the century. Is it worth 
marrying him for?’’ 

She put both elbows on the table by her and 
leant her chin on them, gazing across at him. She 
looked terribly white and haggard, worried and 
unhappy, and half the colour and beauty of her 
face at other times was taken from it, but to 
iVincent it appeared now in the light of the other 
man’s passion, holding, as it had never done yet. 

‘‘If you don’t care for the man, it’s a simple 
sale of yourself, that’s all,” he returned. His own 
face had grown as white as hers, and she saw the 
lines hardening round his mouth. 

“You know I don’t care for him,” said Paula, 
passionately. Vincent’s face grew paler yet, and 
set till it looked rigid and white as the marble 
mantelpiece beside him. He started up and 
walked up and down a length of the room in 
silence. 

“I can’t let you do it,” he said at last, sud- 
denly. “It is a sheer simple prostitution, loath- 
some, unnatural. Nothing would reconcile you 
to it. No success would be worth it. It would be 


PAULA 


127i 


a life of wretchedness for you. Give up the idea.” 

“Then what can I do?” she said, wearily 
leaning back in her chair. “There seems no way 
of getting my work taken otherwise, and you 
see what I am, a hundredth-rate actress, not even 
that now, and with no money and no position; 

I and you I may lose at any minute — ^you don’t 
care for me much. You would not marry me.” 

: Her voice quivered violently. Vincent looked 
I at her and saw the blue eyes swimming; two 
great heavy tears rolled from the hds and fell 
i down the bloodless cheeks. She got up and tried 
: to turn from him. Vincent came towards her. 

“What is it? Come to me,” and he stretched 
I out his arms. All his tenderness and love excited 
; by herself, all his passion roused by the thought 
1 of the other man. As she still shrank from him, 
i trying to check her tears, he came closer and drew 
her to him. “I will marry you, Paula, rather than 
give you up to that fellow Reeves — so let us 
settle it. I can’t bear to see those great big tears.” 
Paula, looking up, saw that the pallor had passed 
from his face; it was flushed and smiling, and 
human-looking now as it bent over her. “Won’t 
that make you happy?” 

Paula put both arms round him and burst 
into a passion of sobs. “Oh yes, yes, as long as 
you cared for me, but you may not. Charlie 
says — ” 

“Well, what?” asked Vincent, a slight hard- 
! ness coming into his voice. 


128 


PAULA 


‘‘That you have loved lots of women, that you 
don’t care for any of them long, that you go from 
one to the other. Will you continue to love me? 
If not — even if we were married — 

“We can’t say anything for the future,” re- 
turned Vincent; “I know nothing about that. 
Why trouble about it? We love each other very 
much now. Hadn’t we better take what the 
present offers, and leave the future to look after 
itself?” 

“Oh, I don’t know; it’s all so complicated, and 
I can’t think now. My head seems spinning 
round, and I must go, Vincent,” she added, free- 
ing herself from him, and looking at the clock. 
“I can’t decide anything. You think it all over, 
and decide for us both.” 

“Nature has decided it already, dear, I think,” 
said Vincent, smiling. “I’m coming back with 
you,” he added, as she picked up the little velvet 
hat she had thrown in one of the chairs. 

The walk back to her house was very silent. 
She felt dazed, incapable of thought. She put 
her arm through Vincent’s, and let it lean there 
with a sense of exquisite pleasure. Could the 
success of any play, the triumph of any art, give 
her more than this? Art, success, triumph, may 
have their own rewards, their own pleasure; but 
the subtlest, keenest, sweetest, most satisfying 
joys remain for ever locked in Nature’s hands. 

The following afternoon, early, Vincent walked 
round to Lisle Street. The air was crisp and 


PAULA 


129 


bright, full of the winter sunlight. Piccadilly; 
was crowded with well-dressed men and women, 
and bright faces stung into colour by the sharp, 
small wind. Everything looked bright and 
cheery, and British and commonplace, at three 
o’clock this February afternoon. Vincent walked 
on with a light heart and a pleasing animation 
within him. It was characteristic of him that he 
never questioned the wisdom of a course once 
decided on, and seldom turned back from it for 
any consideration. As he walked now, it never 
occurred to him to think over the wisdom or un- 
wisdom of the step he had taken. Any hesita- 
tion was over and done with before he had let 
the decisive words pass his lips to Paula last night. 
Now he was only engaged in pleasant visions of 
the future, and thoughts of the woman who 
would share it. Under the influence of his pas- 
sion for her, she seemed to him the condition of 
his life “both necessary and sufficient,” as they 
say in mathematics; and as she was attained, he 
did not trouble to think of anything else just 
then. To marry her quietly, and take her away 
to Cairo within the following week, and then on 
to Australia, was the plan he was building up in 
his brain as he went along. 

As he entered the small dark room from the 
outside air, he was vaguely conscious of stepping 
into another atmosphere, metaphorically as well 
as actually. It was very dark inside, and the air 
: so laden with tobacco smoke that he could hardly 


130 


PAULA 


see across it. There was a faint scent of opium, 
too, that weighed upon the senses. The fire 
burned in a cavernous red hollow, sheets of loose 
paper lay upon the table, and after the first 
second his eyes descried the form of the girl her- 
self lying on the couch beneath the window. She 
had a white dressing-gown on with open sleeves 
falling back from her arms, which were clasped 
above her head, and her hair fell over the edge of 
the low couch and touched the floor. The whole 
formed a sharp contrast to the bustling, practical 
British outside, and would have struck disagree- 
ably on many men, but Vincent was in himself 
peculiar, and the scene amused him rather than 
anything else, while the air of supine decadence 
about the picture was rather a relief to the per- 
petual Philistinism with which he was always 
surrounded and never in sympathy. He came 
up to the sofa with a smile, and would have lifted 
her in his arms but that she started as he ap- 
proached, and something in her face made him 
retreat a little and stand motionless. It was pale, 
and her eyes looked unnaturally bright, with the 
pupils widely dilated in them as if by fear or 
pain, or both. 

“Are you ill, dear?” he said in his softest voice, 
that voice that when Paula heard it always seemed 
to rouse in her the thirst to hear it again. 

“No; at least not physically.” She crossed to 
the mantelpiece as she spoke, and then stood 
leaning there with her back to it. She took a 


PAULA 


131 ] 


paper and some tobacco, and began to roll herself 
a cigarette in her quick, dexterous fingers; the 
action seemed quite mechanical and unconscious, 
the result of extreme mental nervousness and 
tension and suppressed excitement. 

Vincent watched her in silence. Her hands 
were not the least of her attractions. They were 
very white and singularly smooth, slim, but yet 
with every bone beautifully encased and con- 
cealed, and a faint rose flush at each finger tip. 

‘Tt’s no use our seeing each other any more,” 
she said in rather a strained voice, looking down 
at the cigarette as she rolled it. ‘T have quite 
made up my mind, quite decided to marry Reeves, 
and get the play out.” 

The words fell upon Vincent like so many 
distinct cuts with a sword, but he gave not the 
slightest indication of pain, nor even of surprise. 

“After all we said last night,” he merely an- 
swered. 

“What did we say?” returned Paula, running 
the cigarette along her crimson lips to damp the 
gummed edge, and looking at him over it with 
blazing eyes as she did so. “Nothing very 
definite, I think; but anyway if we did, it’s just 
the same : it’s all rescinded, anything I said, can- 
celled by a stronger power than myself.” 

Vincent did not answer. At all times he was 
greater at acts than words, and just now the 
great pain he was passing through deprived him 
pf whatever power he did possess over language. 


132 


PAULA 


“I am forced to do what I am going to do,” 
said Paula, after a second’s silence; ‘‘I can’t help 
myself.” 

A sudden pallor came over Vincent’s face, 
together with a look of clearer comprehension. 
“Who’s forcing you?” he asked quickly. “Reeves? 
Has he? — have you — ” 

“Oh no,” returned Paula hastily, divining his 
thought, and smiling at his literal interpretation 
of her words — “Oh no, I belong to you wholly, 
all that part of me that’s human, much more than 
I shall ever belong to Reeves. I meant a greater 
power altogether. Necessity, the xpw of the 
Greeks — they are horrible words.” She sat 
down on the end of the sofa. She was trembling 
and looking wretchedly ill. Vincent stood mo- 
tionless, half paralysed by the shock of her first 
words. Instinctively he felt they were true, and 
the matter irrevocably fixed. Explanations, 
why and wherefores, would be given him, but 
what did they matter? His consciousness had 
run forward, as it were, and gripped the great 
effect out of the sawdust and chaff of its causes. 
It was everything to him, they nothing. 

“Ho you understand?” the girl said fever- 
ishly. 

“Not altogether,” replied Vincent coldly, sit- 
ting down too, in the old leather chair, and lean- 
ing one elbow on the table beside him. “What 
necessity is there for you to marry the man you 
don’t like, instead of the one you do?” 


PAULA 


133 


‘‘The necessity that it is the quietest way of 
working out my own powers; the necessity for 
working them out lies in the powers themselves. 
Don’t you remember how I told you the first day 
I saw you how gifts are a handicap on the race of 
life? They are, if the goal is happiness ; certainly 
they are. They are just so many obligations, so 
many ties, and claims, and chains. You are born 
into the world already apprenticed, as it were; 
your own will and desires go for nothing. You 
are simply dominated by the great despot that is 
enthroned within you. Your talent, whatever it 
is, makes you work for it. I don’t suppose I can 
explain further to you, Vincent, if we talk for 
ages,” she said, getting up and walking excitedly 
about the room. ‘T can only say this, that when 
any gift is bestowed upon you, the irresistible 
impulse to use it is given too; that when by 
any divine power the brain is fertilised, it must 
produce, just as when a woman has once con- 
ceived she must bring forth.” 

Vincent gazed at her fixedly as she paced up 
and down the tiny space free in the little cramped 
room, while the burning, excited words in the 
musical voice seemed to fall upon him as sparks 
upon his flesh. All the attraction this wildly 
excitable temperament, this intensely vital organ- 
isation possessed for him, crept over him, invaded 
him, gripped him in an intolerable vice. 

“Do you understand any better?” she said, 
suddenly stopping before him. He took one of 


134 


PAULA 


the smooth hands, so soft and weak, yet that pos- 
sessed such an immense power over him. It burnt 
like flame, and sent its quick fire through him. 

“A little; but what happiness will there be for 
either if we are separated?” he murmured, look- 
ing up at her. 

‘‘I see you don’t understand,” she said, with- 
drawing her hand and continuing her excited 
walk. “There is no happiness for me, there can’t 
be. You will find yours elsewhere. I shall never 
find any. People like me never do. The gods 
give them gifts which raise them to their own 
level; then they get jealous of them: they grudge 
what they have given, but they cannot take back 
their gifts, so they strike at the individual and 
his individual happiness: that they can do, and 
they do it. The old Greek metaphor has been 
proved through thousands of years; it is not a 
metaphor, but a fact and a truth — -the envy of 
the gods. To be happy one must be insignificant, 
plain, and stupid. Then one is free, one has no 
obligations, no responsibilities; one can enjoy 
one’s own life; one is not sold into bondage at 
one’s birth. One must have nothing that can 
excite the jealousy of Heaven. If one has, one’s 
life is a mere slavery; a working, a ceaseless 
labour to please those gods that smite us down 
in the moment of our triumph, because we have 
attained to divine things, — because we are one of 
them, and they envy us.” 

Vincent involuntarily glanced round, there 


PAULA 


135 


seemed little enough in her present surroundings 
to excite the envy of the most egoistic god. 
Paula noted, and read his glance instantly. 
Nothing could have been so fatal to his hopes of 
moving her. 

“Yes, I know,” she said vehemently, facing 
him, her whole form trembling with the intensity 
of the emotions vibrating through her. “I know 
it seems ridiculous to talk as I am talking, here 
in this little den, an ordinary commonplace in- 
dividual as I am. I seem absurd, conceited, mad 
or intoxicated, I daresay. Well, that is why I 
mean to prove myself to you, to the world, to 
every one. Why should you believe, why should 
any one believe anything till it is proved? You 
would be fools if you did. I don’t expect you 
to. I don’t care. I don’t want belief. I 
shouldn’t care if you did believe. I want you to 
know. I know what I can do. You shall know 
too. That’s why I am selling myself, because 
it is the necessary price. Come on the night the 
play is produced. Come, and I defy you then 
to deny I am what I claim to be.” As she stood 
in the dim light, her expanded eyes torn wide 
open, and seeming to burn with inward fire, her 
nostrils dilated, her bosom rising and falling as 
the breath came and went through her parted lips, 
it was not difficult to believe her anything she 
might claim to be. 

The Greeks unscrupulously confused together 
excitement, enthusiasm, and divinity. When 


136 


PAULA 


their priestess at Delphi became excited and en- 
thusiastic, they called her inspired and divine, 
and they were right. There is a touch of divinity 
in all human enthusiasm. It alone can command 
and make possible the impossible. Vincent 
started up, completely carried away on the 
stream of her emotion, dominated by her influ- 
ence, thrilled through by her electricity. 

‘T don’t deny anything. Haven’t I always 
sympathised with your talents and your powers? 
My sweet, these are what I love you for; but why 
not make me the instrument for producing them? 
Can’t I do for you all that Reeves can? Come 
and talk to me practically, Paula.” He ap- 
proached her, took her two hands and drew her 
towards him. His face was alight with the ten- 
derest love and admiration. She yielded, and 
came and stood close to him, and looked up. 

“Can you bring out the play at once?” she 
asked merely. She seemed singularly hard and 
unapproachable; wrapped round in that peculiar 
coldness, almost brutality, that seems inseparable 
from the artistic nature, and always co-existent 
with its passionate ardour, its impulsive sym- 
pathy. With divine powers seems lent also at 
times the utter impersonality and impartiality 
of a deity. 

“I would try, but I am afraid I could not 
immediately. I must go out again and see 
after my own affairs — they are dreadfully em- 
barrassed at the present minute; but in a 


PAULA 


137 


year or eighteen months’ time I could do it.” 

Paula twisted away her hands and stood clear 
from him. “Delay means uncertainty, and I 
can’t risk it. The great Now is the only moment 
in life worth counting on. I have promised 
Reeves to marry him on the same day as the play 
is brought out. That is only about two months 
from now.” 

“It is utterly horrible; I can’t believe you will 
do it.” 

“I am going to.” 

“I warn you not to. It’s madness. You can’t 
set aside your own nature.” He was standing 
facing her. He made no further attempt to take 
her hand, but his face was white and drawn with 
pain and anxiety. “If I saw you about to cut 
your throat with a razor I could not feel more 
acutely. You may not see the future, but I do if 
you marry that man, or any man, without love.” 

“I can’t help it, I must do it.” 

“Very well, you will regret it.” 

There was no answer. Vincent took his hat and 
walked to the door without another word. Paula 
did not seek to detain him. What was the good? 
She had already set aside her nature, resolved to 
trample on its impulses and disobey its laws. 

Vincent walked out of Lisle Street, and went 
slowly in the direction of his own place. When he 
reached his room, he flung himself on the sofa and 
lay there with closed eyes. He felt strangely ex- 
hausted. His nerves seemed collapsing, running 


138 


PAULA 


down like the strings of an instrument that has 
been tuned beyond the pitch at which it will stand. 
It was one of the most charming traits in Vin- 
cent’s character, his utter lack of appreciation of 
self. It had been one of the qualities Paula most 
had loved in him. It seemed marvellous to her 
self-confident, arrogant nature that any one 
could possess so much and seem to recognise their 
possessions so little ; could have so great a charm 
for others and be so unconscious of it himself; 
could habitually so undervalue his own powers, 
his own good looks. Certainly Vincent did so; 
as he lay there now, he was conscious of suffering 
acutely, but his suffering did not seem unjust nor 
unreasonable. It seemed natural that the girl 
should refuse to sacrifice her work to himself. 
What had he to offer for a young life and an 
intellect like this? To him, with his innate gen- 
erous appreciation of others and diffidence of self, 
he seemed to have so little. When at six his ser- 
vant came in with a tray on which were his tea 
things, he did not stir, and when an hour later 
the man came to fetch them, they were still un- 
touched, and his master w^as still lying motionless 
on the couch with his hand over his eyes. 


VI 


The following two months were perhaps the best 
Paula ever knew. They were full of animation, 
each day of them heat hard with the pulse of life. 
She felt herself, realised herself, then fully for 
the first time ; as it were, knew that she was living, 
and saw that her life was an important thing for 
herself and others. It was the period, too, of ex- 
pectation and anticipation, full of happy, eager, 
tremulous longing and looking forward, which 
kept all her feelings excited and her life-stream 
flowing at high pressure. They were now at the 
end of February, the piece was to be produced in 
May, and they were busy with rehearsals, and 
with finding suitable people for the part. 
Reeves humoured Paula in every way, and she 
was an implacable tyrant in everything where the 
play was concerned. She was careless, indiffer- 
ent, yielding on every point, in every way, in all 
her character, except where her art was in ques- 
tion, and here she was immovable, obdurate even 
to cruelty. There was but one way in which 
everything was to be done, every detail managed, 
and that was the right way. So Paula would 
have it done, and not otherwise. 

And her artistic instinct was unerring. She 
never failed here nor made a mistake. Eye and 


140 


PAULA 


ear were equally correct, and her judgment fault- 
less and absolutely unswerving. A single gesture 
would have to be repeated a thousand times, if 
she were not satisfied with it. Placed sometimes 
in her stall in front with Reeves beside, and her 
brother and Austin Davies on the other side of 
her, she would sit, frowning and implacable, and 
insist that a certain line was spoken wrongly, and 
have it repeated and repeated till every one but 
herself was weary and impatient, and urged her 
to be, or at least to seem, satisfied. But Paula 
would not give way. 

“I don’t care,” she would say coldly; “it isn’t 
right, and you must go on till you get it so.” 
Reeves, tired though he might be, hypercritical 
as he might think her, was too proud and too fond 
of her to do less than back her up, so she sat 
on frowning and attentive, and the others waited 
yawning, and the actor or actress went through 
the faulty fragment again and again till his or her 
throat ached. Generally under Paula’s directions 
the right thing was obtained at last, and then 
Paula would rise at once. “That’s it, you’ve 
got it. You’ve arrived,” she would say; and 
then turning to the others, “Now don’t you see 
that that’s a different thing altogether. Wasn’t 
I right?” And they had to admit that she was. 

Paula enjoyed those afternoons of rehearsal, 
whether she was on the stagfe or guiding the 
others from the house. Her whole daring, clever, 
active spirit rose to the work. She embraced it 


PAULA 


141 


I passionately, ardently. She was full of that en- 
I thusiasm that clears away all difficulties before it, 
and can make success out of the poorest materials. 
! And here everything favoured her. She saw her 
advantages were exceptional, and meant to use 
them to the full. Reeves being entirely devoted 
to her, her word was law inside the theatre: no 
one dared to contradict nor to withstand her. It 
became her world, and she ruled in it despotically. 
It was the kingdom for which she had sold herself, 
and she meant that it should repay her. Not 
; that she was disliked within it. Real power, real 
abilities, always grind out a certain admiration 
and respect from surrounding lower minds. In 
all these weeks she was wholly artist. The woman 
seemed to have died in her when she parted with 
Halham. She rarely thought of him, and never 
alluded to him. 

She thought she had risen superior to her na- 
' ture, certainly it did not trouble her. She was 
gloriously happy in the abstract pleasure of her 
' work and her art, delighted with all the mental 
emotions she went through daily, the glow of 
flattered vanity, of satisfied pride and gratified 
! ambition. She was under the influence of a men- 
I tal intoxication, which is a state as clearly defined, 
and one as fatal to the true perception of things, 
as physical intoxication. 

Reeves wisely did not attempt to interrupt the 
current of affairs that seemed flowing so much 
1 in the direction of his wishes. He was Paula’s 


142 


PAULA 


devoted slave in the theatre, the sharp, powerful 
tool with which she carved everything there to her 
own ideas, and at all other times he encompassed 
her with a fine indulgent fatherly affection which 
was so subdued and unobtrusive that Paula really 
hardly noticed it in the stress of all her other 
feelings. She grew very fond of him too, in an 
affectionate, careless sort of way that left all the 
deeper springs of her nature quite untouched. 
The strange waves of emotions that had upheaved 
in her at the approach of the other man had sunk 
again to a fiat level, passed over and gone by. 
She had almost forgotten them. The idea that 
one day they might rise again and sweep every- 
thing before them, would have seemed ludicrous, 
had it been suggested to her. However, there 
was nothing to suggest it. Halham had gone, 
and remained away, and Reeves was careful not 
to alarm nor even rouse her numbed susceptibili- 
ties. He never approached the subject of love 
with her, and their lips never met. A kiss 
dropped on her soft hair, sometimes at parting 
with her, was the greatest licence he allowed him- 
self, and she ceased to feel dislike, or fear, or 
repulsion, as she found there was no coercion and 
no restraint put upon her. At the theatre, where 
her enviable position might have made her the 
object of jealous hatred, she became after the 
first few weeks extremely popular. She was one 
of those natures that love being loved by their 
fellows^ and outside the questions of her art she 


PAULA 


143 


took some trouble to be amiable, and to conciliate 
every one she came in contact with. Her sym- 
pathies were naturally very quick, and the least 
suffering she became cognisant of called them 
forth. A sprained ankle or a chapped arm 
amongst any of the girls belonging to the staff 
excited her pity and drew some compensation 
from her. And so the two months slipped by, 
and in a waking dream, in a blind mental drunk- 
enness, Paula walked onward to the edge of the 
precipice. 


VII 


The morning of the fifth of May broke clear and 
brilliant, the dawning was like a divine smile upon 
the earth. Paula opened her eyes in the twilight 
of her white-curtained bed, as the first rose of 
dawn gleamed on the windows ; and then let her 
lids close languidly again with a sigh. The bur- 
den of this day and its responsibilities — its great 
issues of success or failure, its great possibilities, 
its great uncertainties — seemed in that moment 
of first awakening too heavy to be borne. She 
lay idle, motionless, in the bed with her eyes 
closed, and her hair loose and disordered on the 
pillow, her face as pale as the linen. She had had 
little sleep the night before, and that little over- 
shadowed with a sense of oppression that had 
weighed on the tired brain all night, and forced 
it to awake now at the first dawn. It was her 
wedding-day — a day by some women looked upon 
as the most eventful of their lives, but to Paula, 
if the fact was even present to her remembrance 
just then, it seemed as nothing; it was micro- 
scopic in importance, reduced to infinitesimal pro- 
portions by the side of its huge neighbour. It 
was her wedding-day, but it was the day of the 
first representation. Would it succeed or would 
it fail? On her rested all the effort, all the 


PAULA 


145 


work, and the result — after all — on chance! 

She moved wearily, opened her eyes, and 
glanced longingly at the bottle of chloroform 
standing on the corner of the dressing-table. A 
little of that on a handkerchief to her nostrils, 
and she could drift quietly back into oblivion and 
rest — for ever, slip off the burden and escape the 
ordeal. She almost stretched her hand to the 
bottle, so great was the sense of nervous shrink- 
ing, of reaction, almost of terror, now on the 
threshold of her accomplished wishes. Then came 
the thought born of her genius and her pride. 
“You must succeed.’’ She seemed to hear it in 
the room like a divine whisper. The lovely breast 
swelled under its laces ; she pushed the hair from 
her- eyes with both hands, and murmured half 
aloud, “I will.” 

Still she did not stir. Such a deadly weakness 
weighed upon her. She glanced round the room, 
watching the light grow stronger. Then all at 
once a finger of sun darted through the crack of 
the blind and fell on Vincent’s portrait, glinting 
across the glass. Her eye caught it, and for the 
first time a dim realisation of what the day was, 
for her, flashed upon her. “Oh, darling, darling,” 
she thought, with a rush of hot tears in her eyes 
as she stretched out her arms to the portrait, “I 
shouldn’t feel like this if it were you!” So she 
I lay for a few seconds staring at the picture, with 
j the tears falling down her pale cheeks; but the 
|; great central idea that pressed upon her mind 


146 


PAULA 


crushed down all others. Her thoughts, that had 
clung to Vincent for a moment or two, and dwelt 
with horror upon Reeves, reverted violently to the 
play, and the images of both men faded like the 
shadows in a mist. She sat up at last, pushed 
down the bed-clothes, and put her feet over the 
bedside. She sat looking down at them thought- 
fully for a few minutes. They had a great deal 
before them, a great deal to do, and a great deal 
depended on them, these small feet. A great 
deal; the brilliance of the play went for much, 
her own acting went for much, but her dancing 
for perhaps more than all. They looked smooth, 
firm, and rosy, fit for anything, and she swung 
them joyously together. What other feet in all 
London could dance like these? That dance, in- 
comparable, unique as it was, would make any 
play go down. London would come to see it 
alone, if nothing else. 

She got up at last and walked over to the glass. 
She drew back the curtains from the window, and 
stood looking out, her eyes fixed distantly at a 
house across the street. She was a beautiful, 
charming figure with the linen falling a little open 
at the solid throat, only half concealing one 
smooth breast, and her hair with the morning 
light on it curling on her shoulders. But she 
looked and felt ill, her hand shook nervously on 
the curtain; there was a frightful pallor upon 
her face, the pallor of late hours and over-fatigue 
and overstrain, and the effects of these ached 


PAULA 


147 


through her system. That dreadful indefinable 
weight upon her heart, that is the cost of all great 
desire, the sense of responsibility, seemed suffo- 
cating her. 

She looked across the street, and in the oppo- 
site house she saw a little dull-haired shop-girl 
washing her face and neck close by the open 
window. It came to her the thought, that girl 
on her wedding morning, what would her feelings 
be? A simple, unfettered, irresponsible happi- 
ness, the unreasoning light-heartedness of un- 
spoiled health, and a joy, genuine if coarse and 
primitive, at the thought of her oily-haired young 
shop assistant — the man of her choice. How 
different from herself this morning, sick and 
overstrained, torn with her keen desires and sharp 
hopes, and even her own body demanded as the 
price of success, and self so obliterated within her 
that she had no room for repulsion in her brain! 
A smile passed over her face as she caught its 
reflection in the glass and let the curtain slide 
from her tremulous hand. “Happy are they that 
have no gifts.” 

She did up her hair as well as she could with 
her uncertain fingers, and then dressed rather 
slowly but calmly. She was too absorbed in the 
thought of the evening to be anything but calm, 
calm and collected in doing the little things 
required of her. When she had packed up the 
few things still remaining from last night, and 
fastened the last button in the bodice of her white 


148 


PAULA 


cloth dress, she went into the httle sitting-room, 
her gloves and large white hat in her hand. The 
marriage was to be before the registrar, by 
Paula’s wish. “What is the use of going to 
church?” she had asked. “It seems so ridiculous 
when you know what a Pagan, and Hedonist, 
and all the rest of it, you are marrying. Besides, 
it makes more unnecessary bother. If you will 
crowd the ceremony into the same day as the first 
show, it must be done quietly, or I shan’t be fit 
for anything in the evening,” and as Paula wished 
so it was arranged. There was to be a quiet wed- 
ding at the registry, and in place of a wedding 
breakfast a big supper at the Savoy after the 
play. 

“Our last breakfast together, Charlie,” she 
said, when they were both seated at it, looking 
across the little round table which had served 
them for so long, looking with a sweet smile in 
her soft eyes. 

The young man opposite seemed to gulp some- 
thing down his throat which was harder to swal- 
low than his coffee as he met it. “Yes, dear, I 
shall miss you dreadfully,” he said, after a mo- 
ment. That was all, but there were eloquent 
pauses between each word. 

“I hope you will be snug in the new rooms,” 
she said softly. “I am glad you’re going there. 
I couldn’t bear to leave you here. In St. James’ 
Street you will be close to Vincent,” — her bps 
grew white at his name, — “and see him a good 


PAULA 


149 


deal, I expect . . . oftener than ... I shall.” 
She stopped, unable to say more; and Charlie 
was silent too, and looked away. 

He would not say a word to cloud her feelings 
further: he thought of the Greek commonplace, 
“Speak no ill-omened words;” but in his heart 
he thought, “I wish to Heaven she were marry- 
ing the right man; I’m sure this will be a bad 
business.” They finished their breakfast, or 
rather the pretence they made of it, in silence. 
Then as Paula got up and passed his chair, she 
laid her hand on his shoulder. “It’s well worth 
it, Charlie dear,” she said, reading his thoughts 
and answering them. “Think of me on the boards 
to-night.” 

A little past noon, in the full blaze of the 
fresh May sunlight, in the little brougham that 
threaded its way briskly through the thick of the 
traffic in Piccadilly, Reeves turned to Paula and 
drew his pale, nervous-eyed bride into his arms. 
Paula made no resistance. She even lifted her 
face to his with a smile, but her lips remained 
unresponsive to the touch of his: she hardly no- 
ticed the passion in his arms as they interlaced 
her and pressed her to him. She was abstracted, 
absorbed in all that lay before her. The step 
she had just taken had not roused nor moved 
her ; it seemed such a little thing beside the issues 
hanging over her! But she had an intensely kind 
and sympathetic nature. It would have been 
impossible to stir passion in her then, or any per- 


150 


PAUOl 


sonal emotion, but even her mental absorption 
could not do away with her unselfish instincts. 
She saw vaguely that Reeves sank back in his 
place with a look of disappointment, and she laid 
her hand on his impulsively. “Dear Dick,” she 
said, “you mustn’t mind my being distraite just 
now. I am quite dead, as it were, to every emo- 
tion but anticipation of this evening. After- 
wards, when I know it’s a success — after twelve, 
after we’ve left the theatre — I’ll wake up, for 
you.” The accent and the softness with which 
she spoke the last two words were ineffable as 
she laid her head against his shoulder, and the 
sweetness of them thrilled through and through 
the man who heard them. Paula was unconscious 
of their effect, almost of the words themselves. 
She used them and the accompanying tones al- 
most mechanically. She had meant to say some- 
thing to comfort Reeves, and she had said it, and 
her thoughts slipped back to the stage again. 

When they reached Reeves’s house, she found 
quite a large reception to meet and welcome her. 
The stone staircase had its balustrade decorated 
with lilies up to the first floor, and was lined on 
each side with tiers of white and crimson flowers. 
Several friends of his met her at the door and 
pressed round her with congratulations. Austin 
Davies came up amongst the first, and it was 
noticed Paula thanked him more warmly than 
any one else. She did so unconsciously, merely 
because he was more intimately connected with 


PAULA 


151 


her play than any of the rest. When she reached 
the rooms upstairs, she saw without heeding that 
Reeves had had them decorated like the stair- 
case. Masses of white flowers met the eye from 
every side, and near the window rose a bank 
completely formed of white hyacinths, with her 
name, Paula, in scarlet geraniums written across 
it. 

The rooms were filled, though not crowded, by 
the people she had got to know within the last two 
months, and every one agreed that she had seldom 
looked better than when she appeared and hesi- 
tated an instant with delightful want of confi- 
dence on the threshold. The clear pallor of the 
face above its white dress, with the faint flush of 
excitement in the cheeks, and the widely dilated 
eyes, 'filled with light and looking out from be- 
neath its dark eyebrows, made you forget the 
irregularity of its features. The abnormal clever- 
ness and power in the face struck you and held 
you, just as its delicacy, almost ill-health, fascina- 
ted you. Congratulations poured over her, and 
Paula with her sweet smile moved amongst the 
group of figures exchanging her thanks with 
little tender remarks and compliments to the 
women, such as had made her so popular at the 
theatre. 

At last, when much champagne had been con- 
sumed, and Paula’s health drunk several times, 
and that of the play, the dance, the theatre, the 
drama in general, and every other toast that could 


152 


PAULA 


possibly be thought of, a move for departure was 
made among the guests, and they retreated gradu- 
ally, each without exception assuring her that 
they were coming to witness her triumph in the 
evening. When the last had gone, Paula’s 
strength seemed to collapse. “Oh, Dick,” she 
said, laying her hand on Reeves’s, “I feel so ill.” 
He looked at her and saw an abject terror in her 
eyes. Usually she did not care a hang, as she 
would have expressed it, whether she felt ill or 
well, but to-night! If she were ill to-night, at 
the theatre! Reeves half supported her to the 
sofa. 

“Lie down, darling, and rest,” he said very 
gently, as she sank down on it. He brought her 
a glass of champagne from the inner room, but 
she motioned it away with a friendly smile. It 
made her feel sick. He stood beside her with his 
watch in his hand, looldng from her to it with a 
worried expression. “I ought to be down at the 
theatre, there’s so much to see to; but I don’t 
like to leave you.” 

A gleam of fresh animation leapt into Paula’s 
eyes, she opened them wide and looked up 
eagerly. “Oh, yes; go if it’s necessary,” she said, 
“Am I wanted? Shall I come too?” 

“No; you’d much better keep quiet,” he said, 
looking at her anxiously, “and reserve your 
strength.” 

She caught his hand between her two, that 
burnt ^vith fever. “You’ll do everything— exert 


PAULA 


153 


yourself to the utmost to mate it a success, won’t 
you?” she said, fixing her strangely dilated eyes 
on his face. '‘It’s the road to my love, Dick; I’ll 
do anything for you if it succeeds — I’ll adore 
you.” She spoke without weighing or calculating 
her words, without even thinking of them. 
Words, with all their necessary tones and accents 
and subtle intonations of voice, were such ready 
familiar servants to her, and did their work 
generally so well. Reeves felt stirred to the 
innermost depths of his being as he heard them, 
and he bent over her with a hot flush in his face, 
and kissed her enthusiastically on her lips. 

“Darling!” was all he said; but Paula knew the 
very utmost would be done, and, as the door shut 
quietly behind him, her head sank back on the 
cushion content. She lay there with eyes closed 
and arms outstretched, one hand trailed upon the 
floor beside the low couch. She was not thinking 
of her husband, she did not feel the warmth that 
his excited kisses still left upon her face, nor was 
she thinking of Vincent — only of the evening’s 
work. 

By seven o’clock the theatre was filling rapidly, 
by half -past it was nearly full. The Kghts were 
still turned down and twinkled like blinking eyes 
all over the house. The centre of it was filled 
with a faint dusty mistiness that always seems 
clinging about a theatre when the drop-scene is 
not up. The curtains in most of the boxes had 
been draww aside;, and faces looked down from 


154 


PAULA 


between them on the gathering crowd below: 
people were standing up in the stalls with their 
back to the stage scanning the upper galleries. 
There were plenty of celebrities present and 
known beauties, but there was little remark or dis- 
cussion about anything except the play, and this 
new dramatist, actress, and dancer that was about 
to be sprung suddenly upon the world. The 
critics were there in force, and the faces of the 
reporters wore a more haggard and eager look 
than usual. The orchestra filed in and began to 
tune softly, its scrapings and twitterings seemed 
an accompaniment to the excited talk in whisper- 
ing and undertones that was going on in all parts 
of the house ; numberless bouquets of all sorts and 
dimensions lay along the velvet ledges of the 
boxes and dress circle, ready to be thrown. A 
sense of suppressed eager anticipation hung over 
the whole house. 

A little earlier than this, Paula was driving 
down in Reeves’s carriage to the theatre where 
the public were waiting for her so eagerly, ready 
to welcome her and acclaim her if she succeeded 
to the full, eager to fall upon her and rend her in 
pieces — metaphorically — if she failed or slipped 
in the minutest detail from physical weakness 
or any other cause, and to fall upon her with all 
the more merciless condemnation for having 
dared so much. They drove in silence, sitting 
side by side, one of her hands, a small cold hand, 
damp with excitement, closed tight in his, her 


PAULiS 


155 


head upon his shoulder, and her eyes closed with 
the tears of nervous weakness falling down her 
pale cheeks. “Our friend Halham has come 
back,” remarked Reeves after a minute or two 
of silence; “I found him at the box office this 
afternoon. I have taken him into my box, of 
course.” 

“Yes,” assented Paula. She hardly heard or 
understood, and Reeves lapsed into silence again. 

At the last minute before the curtain went up, 
Vincent came round to the green-room to see her. 
It was full of figures, and he found himself 
pressed back in an angle between the door and 
the wall. Paula was standing in the centre of the 
room, a tall white figure, pressed round by a 
crowd of sympathisers, each with some sugges- 
tion, some last remark to make. Vincent watched 
her keenly in silence from his place against the 
wall. She was quivering all over, her nostrils beat 
nervously. Each time she turned or moved, he 
saw the sort of tremor agitating her. Reeves laid 
his hand on her shoulder, and said kindly, “How 
nervous you are, dear!” but he was wrong. She 
had passed the nervous stage ; and so Vincent felt, 
watching her. Her trembling now was the mere 
effect of intense mental concentration on the com- 
ing effort, and keen physical excitement. To 
Vincent she seemed quivering, vibrating with her 
reined-in powers, as he had seen racers quiver 
when reined-in at the start. 

At last Reeves said, ‘‘Now, dear!” and Paula, 


156 


PAULA 


with her hand on his arm, walked to the door, fol- 
lowed by the others; they pressed past Vincent. 
Her eyes did not glance in his direction, and they 
went down towards the stage. 

Vincent left the green-room and hurried back 
to regain the box; when he was half-way there, 
the dull, thundering noise of applause, like a 
heavy sea breaking on the beach, came to his ears, 
and he knew she was on the boards. From the 
first few moments of her appearance, eyery one, 
from wall to wall of the theatre, felt that she 
had the makings of a great actress in her. Physi- 
cal gifts go for so much in this art, of which, 
perhaps, the least powerful is mere beauty. An 
exquisite suppleness of voice, an unusual plas- 
ticity of form, a power of perfect expression by 
the face alone, these are the gifts that are neces- 
sary and sufficient. And with all these Paula 
was endowed; but there was yet more given into > 
her hand. Underlying the powers of expression J 
there was the intensity of emotion to express. | 

As she came down the boards towards the foot- 1 
lights, looking absurdly young, and gazed across j 
at the waiting house, there was a curious fire in | 
the widely dilated eyes ; the divine afflatus seemed ] 
to be upon the proudly smiling lips. Great and ■ 
prolonged was the applause, and Paula smiled ^ 
a sweet, tender, confident smile, that seemed to | 
embrace the whole audience. She felt she loved % 
it. There was hardly a trace of nervousness. In 
the first few words she had to speak she| 


PAULA 


157 


lost memory of the listening, watching house. 

There was much scribbling in the critics’ note- 
books. Reviews already written out received 
points and touches. Already prepared eulogies 
on her voice were tuned up a screw of the peg 
higher. It had never at any of the rehearsals 
been so purely soft and beautiful, so full of tears, 
so running over with laughter as to-night. 

As the first act drew to its close, every one felt 
a leaping impulse to begin to applaud not only 
the acting, but the piece. “It is good,” was the 
one verdict in every brain, accented with envy, 
surprise, reluctance, or satisfaction, according to 
the critic’s view and preconceived ideas. 

At the end of the first act, as she stood bowing 
by Reeves’s side in response to the furore of 
applause, she happened to glance for the first 
time towards the box where now Vincent sat 
alone, and straight across the glare of the foot- 
lights, above the rows of applauding stalls, she 
met the tranquil blue eyes with their steady gaze 
fixed upon her, that she had last seen in her little 
dim room at Lisle Street when she had boasted 
of her powers. For a minute the whole house 
seemed rocking before her gaze, ceiling and 
gilded gallery and the huge globe of light above 
seemed to swirl round together, and through a 
mist, a chaos of faces and light, shone steadily 
upon her those calm fixed eyes. The next instant 
her vision and brain were clear again. A fiercer 
flame of animation than before leapt through 


158 


PAULA 


her. People said afterwards there was more pas- 
sion in her acting after the first act, that she sur- 
passed herself in the second and third, and they 
attributed it to her having gained more confi- 
dence, to the greater scope given by the acts 
themselves, and various other wrong causes. 
Reading these reports afterwards, the only two 
people who knew the right cause smiled painfully. 

For the last scene in the third act every one 
settled down in their seats, more firmly, as it 
were; a rustle went through the whole house, as 
the women arranged their dresses and their pro- 
grammes just as they wanted them to be through 
the whole scene, not wishing to have to disturb 
them again. Everybody whispered to his neigh- 
bour that now the famous dance was coming, 
though everybody knew it; then gradually a 
silence grew and spread, and in an excited hush 
of expectation the curtain went up. The last 
scene was laid in the Persian Court, and a 
beautiful scene of brilliance, life, animation, 
colour, and movement it was. A thousand lights 
hung from the fretted roof and sparkled through 
ruby and violet glass, and glinted through 
bronze open-work, throwing a shimmering, 
swimming glow over the marble floors and the 
vivid Mohammedan costumes. 

Paula had no trade jealousy. Her engrained 
arrogance and belief in herself saved her from a 
hundred other petty failings. She had thought 
first of the play, last of herself, and had worked 


PAULA 


159 


sedulously through Reeves and his manager to 
collect together, not a cast of inferior talent, to 
form a foil to her own powers, but one that should 
be a brilliant setting to them. She would have 
laughed at the idea of being eclipsed. 

“You take care of the play; I’ll take care of 
myself,” she had said mockingly to Austin Da- 
vies, when he had suggested a lovely face in 
Fidelia’s rival, or a pecuKarly well-acted minor 
part, would detract from the effect that Paula’s 
Fidelia created. And she was justified. Now, 
when she was surrounded by the art and the 
talent she had welcomed, there was still no voice 
quite like hers, no figure that drew the watching 
eyes from hers. A miraculous surplus of life 
seemed lent her, and the passionate fervour with 
which she spoke and moved and loved, as the 
Persian girl, carried away even the stoniest, most 
blase of “first-nighters.” It was so perfectly 
easy and natural to her; an effect obtained with- 
out the slightest straining. The whole part was 
but a revelation, and that not a full one, of her 
ardent, joyous, living self. All her powers were 
exercised as easily, as spontaneously as the song 
comes trilling, bubbling, and gushing from the 
thrush’s throat. 

The dance was to be the finale, and as the 
heavy blue carpet was unrolled in the centre of 
the crowded stage, before Fidelia’s feet, the still- 
ness amongst the audience was a stillness that 
might be felt. Then as the orchestra started a 


160 


PAULA 


faint slow music with a peculiar rhythm, she com- 
menced her dance. Every one in the crowd on 
the stage had his allotted part to play as onlooker, 
but had he forgotten it, no one would have noticed 
it, so completely was attention riveted to the 
dancer, so irresistibly was every eye kept held, 
powerless to transfer its gaze, on the exquisite 
figure bending and curving itself to form ten 
thousand perfect lines, the formation and break- 
ing up of which followed exactly the faint risings 
and fallings of the weird music. So wonderfully 
did the symmetries of her movement seem to fall 
in with the symphony of the music that the senses 
seemed doubled and confused; one seemed sud- 
denly to lose distinction as to which was sound 
and which motion. 

There had been whispers of Mrs. Grundy and 
remarks anent the British public with reference 
to this dance, which Paula had as usual smiled 
away in unlimited scorn, but which had been the 
subject of anxious private discussions between 
Reeves and his stage manager in her absence ; but 
Reeves, spurred on by his love and fortified by 
his artistic sense, had determined to risk it, and 
for once Mrs. Grundy was silenced, and the great 
British public sat enthralled without cavilling, 
without straining after their blushes, simply 
pinned to their seats with their eyes pinned open, 
as the loveliness of true art, untrammelled by fear, 
unfettered by restrictions, was revealed to them. 
Hardly a breath was drawn, the quiet throughout 


PAULA 


161 


the house was intense. In a cathedral the silence 
could not have been deeper, naore reverent, the 
motionless figures that watched that one figure 
that moved might have been assisting at some 
great religious rite — and after all, were they not? 
What is religion but a sense of the divine, and 
these were divine gifts that were being poured 
out before them in a glad, generous spontaneity. 
When the dance and the scene terminated and the 
curtain fell, there was still a second of silence. 
Then the lights were turned up, and the storm of 
acclamation broke. 

Seldom has an audience been so enthusiastic, 
because seldom has it been so genuinely excited, 
A sort of nervous physical excitement moved the 
onlookers, communicated by the sight of the 
physical effort and tension, and physical triumph, 
they had watched. Some of the women were 
hysterical, the men in the stalls clapped violently, 
the men in the gallery stood up and shouted. 
Reeves, who had been watching the effect from 
the front, in his box, rushed round to receive her 
behind the scene. Charlie followed, pale, and 
with the tears standing in his eyes. Vincent sat 
on, alone, without stirring, his chin resting on his 
hand, his face set and drawn, grimly surveying 
the crowded, excited house. Paula, flying off the 
stage as soon as the curtain touched it, ran 
straight into Reeves’s arms outstretched towards 
her as she came up the wings. He clasped her 
to him, but she struggled herself free from him 


162 


PAULAS 


impatiently. Her hands, and necK, and face 
were damp with sweat, the dust of the boards 
lay on her hair and the scarlet folds of her dress, 
her eyes blazed feverishly. 

“Well, how did I do it?’’ she asked, eagerly 
looking round the animated circle that closed 
about her. “Was it at my best?” There was a 
chorus of enthusiastic voices. Paula looked im- 
ploringly at Austin Davies. He was the man 
whose opinion she wanted most. 

“Was it — was it?” she asked breathlessly. 

“Superb — a triumph,” he answered back with 
the water standing in his keen grey eyes, and a 
glow of admiration on his usually wooden face. 
Meanwhile the audience were becoming furious. 
Paula’s rush from the stage and those few hurried 
exclamations had only taken some seconds, but 
as the curtain remained motionless under their 
warm continued applause, they felt themselves 
injured, and the gallery stood up and stamped 
and shouted “Fidelia,” and “Author,” till the 
theatre echoed. This had the effect of bringing 
Reeves forward slowly before the curtain leading 
the sweet figure their eyes hungered after. There 
was not the faintest trace of nervousness, nor 
fatigue, nor pallor now. Her whole body seemed 
elastic as she walked, her eyes swept the entire 
house, and all saw the flash in them. Her face 
was flushed and brilliant with dazzling smiles. 
Her whole genius was alight, on fire within her, 
her self-confidence supreme, her pride and elation 


PAULA 


163 


boundless. She bowed, and some of the bouquets 
were thrown to her feet, others handed up over 
the footlights. She bowed again, and such was 
the grace and symmetry and poetry in that one 
single figure before them, the fascinating seduc- 
tion of those bows, that they would have kept 
her there for ever. As she retreated backwards, 
gliding, and soft, and supple, with her eyes smil- 
ing over the bouquet at the great audience ap- 
plauding her, the gods screamed louder, and 
kicked the woodwork before them in a madness 
of appreciation. 

Paula, as she had gone back, had lifted her eyes 
to Reeves’s box, empty now but for that one 
solitary figure sitting motionless as if hewn in 
stone. She saw the grey-hued face with its set 
eyes fixed upon her. The hopeless melancholy 
upon it, and the cold but intensely savage jeal- 
ousy in the eyes pierced to her heart, and sent a 
greater intoxication to her brain than all the 
thunder of the house. She felt wild, maddened, 
out of herself, beyond control almost with elation, 
with triumph, with a mental drunkenness of sheer 
delight. 

Upstairs in her dressing-room, she tore off the 
Mohammedan dress with wild, impatient fingers. 
What would he say to her? How would he greet 
her? What had he been thinking of her? He 
had come back! He had responded to her chal- 
lenge! He had come to see her triumph! Well, 
he had seen it. The thoughts raced and bounded 


162 


PAULA 


impatiently. Her hands, and necK, and face 
were damp with sweat, the dust of the boards 
lay on her hair and the scarlet folds of her dress, 
her eyes blazed feverishly. 

‘‘Well, how did I do it?” she asked, eagerly 
looking round the animated circle that closed 
about her. “Was it at my best?” There was a 
chorus of enthusiastic voices. Paula looked im- 
ploringly at Austin Davies. He was the man 
whose opinion she wanted most. 

“Was it — was it?” she asked breathlessly. 

“Superb — a triumph,” he answered back with 
the water standing in his keen grey eyes, and a 
glow of admiration on his usually wooden face. 
Meanwhile the audience were becoming furious. 
Paula’s rush from the stage and those few hurried 
exclamations had only taken some seconds, but 
as the curtain remained motionless under their 
warm continued applause, they felt themselves 
injured, and the gallery stood up and stamped 
and shouted “Fidelia,” and “Author,” till the 
theatre echoed. This had the effect of bringing 
Reeves forward slowly before the curtain leading 
the sweet figure their eyes hungered after. There 
was not the faintest trace of nervousness, nor 
fatigue, nor pallor now. Her whole body seemed 
elastic as she walked, her eyes swept the entire 
house, and all saw the flash in them. Her face 
was flushed and brilliant with dazzling smiles. 
Her whole genius was alight, on fire within her, 
her self-confidence supreme, her pride and elation 


PAULA 


163 


boundless. She bowed, and some of the bouquets 
were thrown to her feet, others handed up over 
the footlights. She bowed again, and such was 
the grace and symmetry and poetry in that one 
single figure before them, the fascinating seduc- 
tion of those bows, that they would have kept 
her there for ever. As she retreated backwards, 
gliding, and soft, and supple, with her eyes smil- 
ing over the bouquet at the great audience ap- 
plauding her, the gods screamed louder, and 
kicked the woodwork before them in a madness 
of appreciation. 

Paula, as she had gone back, had lifted her eyes 
to Reeves’s box, empty now but for that one 
solitary figure sitting motionless as if hewn in 
stone. She saw the grey-hued face with its set 
eyes fixed upon her. The hopeless melancholy 
upon it, and the cold but intensely savage jeal- 
ousy in the eyes pierced to her heart, and sent a 
greater intoxication to her brain than all the 
thunder of the house. She felt wild, maddened, 
out of herself, beyond control almost with elation, 
with triumph, with a mental drunkenness of sheer 
delight. 

Upstairs in her dressing-room, she tore off the 
Mohammedan dress with wild, impatient fingers. 
What would he say to her? How would he greet 
her? What had he been thinking of her? He 
had come back! He had responded to her chal- 
lenge! He had come to see her triumph! Well, 
he had seen it. The thoughts raced and bounded 


164 


PAULA 


through her excited brain in random disorder as 
she shook out the dust from her hair and slipped 
a white petticoat over her head. Her supper 
dress of white satin was lying ready over a chair. 
The dresser stood by holding the bodice, wonder- 
ful in its tourbillons of tulle and lace. To her 
remarks and her flatteries Paula paid no atten- 
tion, and the woman’s voice went on like a badly 
played accompaniment to the dancing music of 
her thoughts. The door opened and Reeves en- 
tered. His wife was before the glass, just lean- 
ing forward to it. In one hand she had a wet 
sponge, and the other leant on the toilet table. 
She saw Reeves enter, and laughed at him as she 
dabbed the sponge to her over-blackened eye- 
lashes. The glass gave back an enchanting pic- 
ture of soft neck and shoulder and arm as she 
balanced forward towards it. Reeves came up 
and planted himself just behind her, and watched 
her over her shoulder. 

“Well, how much longer are you going to be?” 
he said, smiling. “They are all waiting for you, 
and quite rabid downstairs!” Paula laughed 
gaily. 

“Let them wait! I must get this blacking off. 
My eyes look like a pair of boots.” 

“I wanted Halham to stay and come on with 
us to supper, but he wouldn’t. Said he’d been ill 
abroad, and wasn’t properly put together yet, 
and went off in spite of all I could say. I felt 
we should have been more complete with him* 


PAUUA 


165 


He introduced you to me, Polly, do you remem- 
ber?’’ Watching his wife’s sweet brilliant face 
in the glass. Reeves saw a sudden pallor and 
blank come over it. He thought she was going 
to faint. The narrow dressing-room was hot, 
the air laden with dust and the scent of cosmetics, 
and a huge unprotected flare of gas blazed in its 
jet just above her head. “Pull open that sky- 
light,” he said sharply to the dresser as he started 
forward to support his wife, but Paula waved 
him away. 

“Oh, I am all right,” she said, with a hard 
laugh. She was so bitterly disappointed. And 
was this only disappointment, she half wondered 
to herself. This craze of longing to speak with 
Halham now she had seen him, this sickening 
blank and loss because she heard he was not 
coming — what did it mean? Her triumphal joy, 
where had it all vanished? Her impatience to get 
dressed, to see herself look lovely, her wild hurry 
to be downstairs, it was all gone. She could have 
sunk upon the ground and cried. 

“You are overdone, dear child,” said Reeves, 
anxiously. “Come, make haste and get dressed. 
Here, Mrs. Stokes, that skirt, please.” Paula, 
angry and maddened, with feelings she had no 
time and no wish to put a name to, rubbed her 
eyes free of the paint and then turned to the 
dresser. 

“Yes, put it on,” she said impatiently. What 
did anything matter? She did not care now how 


166 


PAULA 


she looked or how she dressed. She almost tore 
the delicate lace of the bodice as she dragged it 
on carelessly with her burning hands. 

Meanwhile Vincent had left the box, passed 
downstairs, and got away from the theatre. His 
head was throbbing hard, his thoughts confused. 
He only knew one thing clearly — he must get 
away. Get out of the intolerable presence of this 
man Reeves, out of hearing of his satisfied self- 
congratulation, his repeated expressions of grati- 
tude to his friend for having, as he expressed it, 
‘‘put a diamond into his hand.” Away from that 
seducing, melting loveliness of form, from those 
sweet speaking limbs and muscles, that, as her 
eyes met his languidly in the slow movement of 
the dance, seemed to say, “I am yours, now and 
ever.” How was it? How had it grown up, this 
monstrous situation? He could not think. He 
only felt an intolerable longing to seize Reeves 
as he sat there, huge, pleased, and smihng, and 
hurl him over the box edge. “My wife,” and “my 
Paula,” and “my creation.” Good God! and 
still the swimming eyes seemed calling to him 
from the stage. Then in the tumults of applause, 
as he looked over the swaying sea of moving 
heads and faces, all this mass of cultured and 
uncultured humanity swayed and ruled by that 
one slender girlish form, he remembered her 
words to him in Lisle Street, the whole scene 
came back to him. Every word was recalled. 
And she had sold herself into servitude, in 


PAULA 


167 


obedience to the aivine powers moving her. 

He left the theatre with his head reeling ; then, 
as he walked, the sudden impulse came to see her 
again, to know how she was looking, feeling. He 
paused, then walked back and round towards 
the stage entrance of the theatre. To join them, 
to be in the company of Reeves and herself, to 
play the quiet interested friend in this mad tur- 
moil of jealo IS rage, was impossible. He looked 
about him There, close by the stage door, was 
another doc:)jrway. The recess was not deep, but 
it lay com;pletely in shadow. Vincent stepped 
into it and waited. The night was moonlit, but 
the moor beams shot by him. The time passed, 
and to Vincent it seemed neither short nor long. 
He was ’n a hell of feeling, in which there is no 
time nor measure of it. It was in reality ten or 
fifteen minutes, perhaps, that he waited there. 
Suddenly there was the sound of laughter; and a 
crowd oi‘ figures, men and women, poured out 
over the narrow pathway into the road. The 
men, mostly laughing and talking and smoking, 
hailed up hansoms; there were a number of 
women, making brilliant patches of colour in 
the grey a:nd black and silver of the moonlit 
street. Vincent saw nothing, there seemed a 
rushing darkness all round his straining vision. 
Then she camn out leaning on Reeves’s arm, a 
pale blue opera-cloak was half tossed back from 
the exquisite bosom rising from the billows of 
tuUe, looking «oft as foam in the moonlight. 


168 


pattt;/v 

■» 

They paused for a moment while the brougham 
came to the kerb, paused not two yards from 
where Vincent stood sheltered by the jutting 
stone of the doorway. He saw her distinctly, 
standing with the light shining brightly on her 
gleaming satin dress and fair head and white 
throat. Tight round the base was a necklet of - 
rubies. Vincent’s eyes swam, and it seemed to I 
him a horrible line of blood. She v/as laughing, 
jesting; the moonlight flashed across her white 
teeth, he heard the soft musical voice and lost its 
words. There was a thundering in h .s ears, the ^ 
sweat ran cold in his palms. Then sh^e had dis- 
appeared; a click of the carriage dooi and the 
coachman drove off, giving nlace to the c rowdine; ' 
hansoms. ' j 

Vincent, careless of observation, left the shadow 
and turned in the opposite direction, i walking ^ 
madly, unconscious of where he was going. At ‘ 
one o’clock a crawling cabby came along the kerb ! 
beside him, with an insinuating, “Keb, sir?” 

Vincent paused, and signed to the man to stop. 
“Drive,” he said merely. His face was a deadly 
white, and great lines of sweat ran along his fore- 
head. 

Cabby looked down at him and h ad his ideas, 
but the distinguished face and figure impressed i 
him, and he answered politely, “Ves, my lord; \ 
where to?” I 

Vincent hesitated. There are moments when > 
the tension in our brain is so e xcessive that it ^ 


PAULA^ 


169 


cannot yield the least, even the very least, atten- 
tion in any other direction than that in which it 
is being wholly drawn. At such times the sim- 
plest, most trivial question looms before us 
meaningless, as impossible to grasp as a mathe- 
matical problem to the unlearned. Vincent gazed 
at the man now with contracted brows. Then 
he said with an effort, “To the Docks,” and pre- 
pared to get in. 

The cabby spoke to him through the trap. 
“It’s a bit too far, my lord,” he said. 

Vincent sat back silent in the cab, then he 
answered mechanically, “Well, go as far as you 
can, and then set me down.” 

“Very good, my lord,” returned cabby, in- 
terested in this fare of the exceedingly pleasing 
face, stamped with such a pallid look of intoler- 
able suffering. Vincent cared nothing where he 
was driven. Movement somehow, somewhere, 
was all that was necessary, and he had already 
walked himself faint in the hot May night. He 
lay back against the cushions, sick and exhausted, 
with closed eyes. Still on the blank darkness 
painted themselves two figures — Reeves, unctu- 
ous, self-satisfied, triumphant, and that other 
sinuous, vivid form dominating the multitude. 
That she loved him, that she belonged to him, that 
she was his, in will, in all those unerring impulses 
that Nature has implanted to make clear her laws, 
he was convinced, and this hideous anomaly of 
surrender to another seemed a thought not to he 


170 


PAULA 


borne. On the night that she was wedded to her 
art she was also wedded to a hf e-long prostitu- 
tion. As she commenced the pure, narrow, up- 
ward path of the one, spiritually she began the 
broad decline of the other. Well, so she had 
decided it to he. It was too late, too late now. 

Maddened by .his own pain, he asked himself, 
‘‘Why had he come back to see it?” And he 
remembered clearly he had never anticipated the 
despair, the regret, the sick, disordered agony he 
felt now. He had fancied in his two months’ 
absence he had grown resigned, and he had 
thought it was merely curiosity that had brought 
him back. His life held so much beyond and out- 
side this girl, and his habit never to recall the past, 
and never to regret the absent, was so fixed that 
her influence over him had sunk rapidly in that 
time. The high road to all love must be the 
senses, and there are few byways. The artist, 
with his exquisitely keen imagination, can love in 
absence; for to him, unless he wishes, there is no 
absence: he can reproduce at will the colour, form, 
and voice of his mistress; he can have the touch 
and sight of her through his imagination as 
keenly as through his senses. But the average 
man cannot. There is no way in which he can 
realise the touch and the sight, and without the 
touch and the sight his passion, even his love dies. 
Vincent had none of the artistic imagination, 
only the artist’s extreme susceptibility of the 
senses. Away from Paula he had been uncon- 


PAULA 


171 


scious almost of his love; here, brought again 
under the sensory influence, his realisation of it 
became terrible. Here too there was more than 
the mere sensory influence — there was the tre- 
mendous stimulus to his vanity. 

Paula had been right in her judgment of him 
when she felt that this man would never love 
her poor, humble, obscure, as he did now in the 
blaze of her realised talents and powers. There 
was such a subtle flattery in the thought that 
hovered in his brain, that she who stood there 
mistress of the house, acclaimed, applauded, 
petted, envied, spoiled, admired, would be sub- 
missive to his slightest command, tremulous with 
pleasure at his touch, obedient to his will. It was 
so in fact. It might have been apparent to all; 
and now he was for ever an outsider — a mere 
railed-off spectator like the rest. The sweetness 
of the flattery seduced his brain, and the pain of 
the following realisation goaded it, in turns. 

Cabby drove leisurely onward, and the sky 
grew pale and stretched its tender green above 
the glimmering waste of streets, the blue of the 
night sky softened, and at last the rose of dawn 
flushed round it above the dark, sharp outlines 
of the roofs, and the light, chill morning breeze 
blew in upon the pale, damp face and the unsee- 
ing eyes beneath the hansom’s lamp. After a 
time the trap was raised. 

‘T can’t go no farther than this ’ere, my lord,” 
came through it. 


172 


PAULA 


“Where do you put up?” came back in his 
fare’s monotonous tones. “Near the Circus, 
Piccadilly?” 

“Yes, my lord, just by there — Eden Mews.” 

“Drive back then.” They turned. Vincent 
looked at his watch. A quarter to three. Had 
they gone home yet? he wondered, with a bitter 
contraction of his mouth. The cabman set him 
down at the Circus. Vincent, stiff and chilly, 
though there was sun npw in the air, drew his 
overcoat across his evening dress, and started to 
walk up Piccadilly. Half-way he turned aside, 
and in a few seconds more stood in the fresh 
young daylight before Reeves’s house and looked 
up. There was a light still visible in the drawing- 
room; all the windows had their blinds still down. 
Vincent looked up. His teeth were set, and in 
the haggard yellow-tinted cheek, deep violet 
hollows shot down far below the eyes. 

Upstairs, within. Reeves and Paula had not 
long returned. She was walking up and down 
the room with a springing step as if she could 
never tire ; her eyes seemed to burn and flame in 
her pale face. She talked and laughed inces- 
santly, holding her cigarette between her teeth, 
the strong light from above falling on her hair as 
she passed and repassed beneath the lamps, and 
making it glitter in all its marked waves. Reeves 
subsided into an arm-chair and sipped a glass of 
milk and soda at intervals: he was beginning to 
feel a sort of oppressed fatigue, and his eyes 


PAUHA 


173 


followed her restless figure dubiously. It was 
almost maniacal, dangerous, her excess of ex- 
citement. Outside the light grew stronger; he 
could see the slits between the Venetians get 
brighter, and hear the sounds of traffic increasing 
in the pauses of Paula’s wild rackety talk. Her 
beautiful voice, full of its own music, was the 
only sound within the rooms. 

Reeves sat silent: at last he said piteously, and 
almost as a child might, with a glance at the 
clock, “Aren’t you coming to bed, dear?” 

Paula stopped short in her frenzied walk and 
looked at him: both soft little hands were bal- 
anced on her lips, her mouth was rippling over 
with laughter. Her eyes met his from under her 
arched lids. “Poor Dick!” she said, half mock- 
ingly. “You’re thinking, ‘Where do I come in?’ 
Four o’clock; it is hard upon you. Well, I’m 
going now,” she turned to the door as she spoke. 
Reeves had sprung to his feet. 

“When may I come?” he said, and his voice 
trembled. 

Paula looked across at the great marble clock 
opposite her. “In fifteen minutes, if you like,” 
she said simply, and went out. She went up the 
broad staircase; it was perfectly silent: the elec- 
tric light burnt steadily amongst the palms and 
statues. Paula passed up, her footfall making 
no sound on the thick carpets. Then she stood 
in her bridal room and looked round, realising for 
the first time fully the step she had taken. She 


174 


PAULA 


stood in the centre of the floor motionless. Out- 
side she could see the May sunshine was strong 
upon the window, the birds were chirruping gaily 
to one another; it was already fresh, glad, inno- 
cent morning over the earth. And she stood and 
shivered in the quiet rose-hued room, so still, so 
quiet, with its steady lights burning on, and the 
rumble of the traflic only coming dimly like a 
murmur from the distance. It seemed like the 
inner recess of some secret temple. At the far 
end she caught a glimpse of her full-length re- 
flection in a glass. She was in white, this was 
her marriage dress. She was married. She was 
about to break the greatest law of Nature — the 
law that a woman shall mate only with the man 
she loves. The sweat broke out and grew cold 
upon her skin. The more she realised her posi- 
tion the more the horror grew. Thoughts of 
marriage inevitably brought the image of Vincent 
with them, and her womanhood, stung and re- 
volted, overthrew the artist’s instincts within her 
and leapt up dismayed and horror-stricken. The 
artist in her loved Reeves as an accessory, an 
indispensable to the work ; and thought of her art 
induced thought of him naturally and painlessly, 
but the woman in her loved Vincent, and the 
idea of love brought him only to her mind. 

It was Vincentes face now that looked down 
upon her eveiywhere from the walls. Vincent’s 
voice seemed calling to her out of space. Vin-’ 
cent’s arms were stretched out to her. His image 


PAULA 


175 


filled the room. Every instinct of her nature, 
every law of her being, demanded him, called for 
him, longed for him. His eyes, his lips, his 
breath, where were they? She extended her arms 
feebly, and gave a little involuntary cry; her 
swimming eyes were hot and blind. A vast, 
angry presence seemed with her in the room, 
threatening her. “How dare you, how dare you 
surrender yourself to another, when you are his — 
his by my will and my laws? My curse upon 
you for ever and ever.’’ And the girl heard it 
and her limbs tottered under her in terror. It 
was the voice of Nature. 

A great horror, a nameless, indefinable, un- 
reasoning fear came over her; the room seemed 
stifling her, the walls falling in upon her, the 
great wrathful presence seemed descending from 
overhead, crushing and blinding her. To escape I 
she rushed with the swirling darkness round her 
to the door. There were a hundred doors as the 
room reeled before her failing vision. She went 
forward, and her head, face and bosom dashed 
violently against the wall. She staggered back- 
wards, stunned and trembling, swayed for an 
instant, and then fell senseless on the ground. 
The joyous sunlight burst through the cracks 
of the blind and filled the room with soft light; 
the birds sang loudly outside. Inside there was 
no sound. 

When Reeves, after many gentle knocks and 
weary waits outside, at length pushed the door 


176 


PAULA 


open and entered softly, he found her there, the 
brilliant figure of last night’s triumph, the suc- 
cess of the season, the envied of half London, 
motionless, unconscious, her hands clenched in an 
agony of despair, a ray of sun striking across 
her blanched, bruised face. 


VIII 


Twelve o’clock the next morning found the 
breakfast table still littered over with the break- 
fast things. Paula, very pale, with a purplish 
bruise spreading over her left temple, sat on the 
sofa drawn up to the table, languidly turning 
over the morning newspapers that lay beside her. 
The jubilant, exuberant sunlight rushed through 
the lowered blinds and lightly-drawn curtains of 
tinted lace behind her, and stray shafts of it 
reached the light hair and made it glow and 
glisten. 

“What have you got there?” said Reeves at 
last, as Paula, sunk in a reverie, remained behind 
the open Telegraph, 

“A review of last night — will you read it to 
me?” she answered wearily; “it’s so long, and my 
eyes feel so tired.” She handed him the paper 
and sat back in the corner of the couch, listlessly 
stroking her hand backwards and forwards over 
its velvet pile while Reeves read. The critic had 
done his best for her. No praise seemed too great 
for the play, the actress, the dance. At the allu- 
sion to the beauty of her figure, a little red flush 
crept into her cheeks as she listened. Had those 
been his thoughts too, all that time he had sat so 
motionless in the box, looking down upon her? 


178 


PAULA 


She quite started when Reeves came to the end of 
the column and his voice ceased; she had missed 
the concluding paragraphs, which was a pity, for 
they were even more rapturous than the rest. 
She looked up, and met Reeves’s eyes beaming 
upon her as he lowered the paper. 

“Unparalleled success,” — “her marvellous 

gifts.” “Well, Paula, are you happy now?” 

Paula fixed her eyes upon him, the blood ebb- 
ing away from her face: the sudden question 
startled her, clashing in upon her thoughts. 
“Happy?” she echoed, and then added, with a 
strained smile, “What is being happy? Who 
shall say? The Telegraph critic apparently 
thinks I ought to be. Here, what do they say 
in the Times?'" 

Reeves laid aside the Telegraph and took the 
Times she offered him. She listened as before, 
silent, with bent head and eyes fixed on the 
couch while he read aloud her praises. She was 
one exceptionally favoured by nature and for- 
tune, a dramatist born, a genius fully revealed. 
Paula listened, and underneath she seemed to 
hear a voice continually repeating, “You are a 
prostitute: what better?” Was that what he was 
thinking of her? 

“It makes very pleasant reading, eh?” said 
Reeves, with a laugh, from across the table, when 
he had exhausted the Times' correspondent’s 
opinions. 

“kYes, it’s very nice,” she answered; “but I 


PAULA 


179 


don’t think I’ll hear any more, it seems to make 
my head ache. You read to yourself.” Then 
she lay back with closed eyes. Reeves looked 
nervously at the pale face for a minute, then 
turned back to reading the review, and there 
was silence in the room except for the occasional 
rustling of the paper. 

Paula felt as if an iron band were cutting into 
her forehead, just above the eyes; the first full, 
awful realisation of having made some great 
error, which she was helpless to undo, and of 
which all the consequences loomed indefinably 
vague and horrible before her, beat in persistently 
on her brain. She wanted not to think, to make 
her mind a blank, but she could not. Each time 
she raised her lids she saw her husband’s figure 
sitting opposite, and a sudden sense of suffoca- 
tion, a loathing of his presence, filled her. And 
this was the man she was to live with day after 
day for years ! 

Why had she not understood better ? Why had 
she not listened to Vincent’s warnings? She had 
been absolutely blind and deaf till now. During 
her engagement to Reeves, while still untied to 
him, she had felt none of this desperate revolt. 
The irrevocable has always a terror for vacil- 
lating humanity. How carelessly one walks in 
and out of a prison cell when merely on a visit of 
inspection; it does not strike one as particularly 
appalhng ; but if suddenly the door shut upon us, 
shutting us inside, with what an agony, of despair 


180 


PAULA 


should we see it close. Paula had been with 
Reeves daily, going in and out of her cell, so to 
speak; but now the door was shut, and the key 
turned. 

After a minute or two she started to her feet; 
she felt literally she was going mad. She crossed 
towards the door. Reeves looked up. ‘'Where 
are you going?” he asked. The question came 
like fire to a wound. It seemed to madden fur- 
ther the girl’s over-strung nerves. Was she never 
to move now without sanction? She stood still 
half-way to the door, and looked back to him. A 
physiognomist could have read the terrible, stifled 
agony within her, on her face. To Reeves she 
only looked horribly pale, almost livid in the 
warm sunlight, and haggard beyond descrip- 
tion. She controlled herself with a great 
effort. 

“I am going upstairs to finish dressing,” she 
answered coldly. 

“Oh, well, look here! I must go down to the 
theatre this afternoon; you’ll come too, won’t 
you?” A sense of relief passed through her. 

“Must you? No; I am too tired to come.” 

“Very well. I shan’t be away long, dear.” 
Paula said nothing, and went upstairs. 

Late that afternoon Vincent stood in his 
dressing-room, just redressed and shaved after 
his sleepless night. The face that the glass gave 
back to him was white and aged, seamed deeply 
by that most terrible of all our passions, jealousy. 


PAULA 


181 


‘‘She has succeeded in making me suffer as she 
has succeeded in everything else,” he thought, 
with a resentful bitterness quite alien to his usual 
frame of thought. “It would be a pity not to go 
and congratulate her,” and he went out, going 
first to his club, and then on slowly with an aching 
heart towards Paula’s new residence. Half-way 
up Piccadilly a friend met him, and though 
Vincent would have passed with a careless 
smiling salutation, the other arrested him with 
a chaffing remonstrance: “My dear Halham, 
what is the matter? You don’t look yourself at 
all! What is it, eh, liver?” 

“No,” replied Vincent, smiling, and looking, 

as his friend thought, “d d handsome,” as he 

stared at the pallid face in the sunlight. “Just 
a touch of cardiac neuralgia, that’s all.” He 
tapped his chest lightly as he spoke, and after 
some commiseration from his friend, passed on 
with a bitter smile. 

He found Paula sitting in the drawing-room, 
of which the blinds were lowered almost to the 
ground. She was on the sofa, leaning forward, 
her arms resting on her knees, her hands clasped 
loosely together. She looked up as he entered the 
darkened room. Such a white face, such pained, 
excited eyes met his. He paused involuntarily as 
his gaze took in the disconsolate figure, the 
crushed, drooping attitude. This was so differ- 
ent from what he had expected. He had come 
from his club, where the talk had been principally; 


182 


PAULA 


of Paula, her charm, her powers, her success, and 
thence along Piccadilly, where her photograph in 
every conceivable attitude and costume filled the 
shop windows ; and here he had expected to find 
her herself, radiant, elated, proud, the centre of 
a crowd of flatterers, laughing, delighted, over- 
joyed by' the universal adulation and homage, 
and instead she sat hke this alone, one sohtary 
drooping figure in the shaded room, pallid, and 
her eyes darkened by tears, like a mourner in a 
fresh bereavement. She touched him more like 
this than as she had been the night before — more 
perhaps than she had ever done. The resentment 
and the anger against her he had been feeling 
died away completely, and a great pity for her 
took their place. 

Her face, her form, the very position in which 
she sat, expressed a hopeless dejection. As he 
approached she rose, lifted her heavy eyes to 
his face for a moment, and then sat down as be- 
fore. He took his seat beside her on the couch 
and covered one little hand with his. She did 
not move away, nor alter her attitude, nor feign 
a smile. He glanced over her. She was very 
simply dressed, her hair merely twisted round her 
head; there was nothing either assumed or con- 
cealed in her grief, he saw. She neither displayed 
it nor hid it. Whatever she might be to the public 
and others, to him she was the same simple, nat- 
ural, child-like Paula as of old. A tide of sym- 
pathy welled up in his heart for her, poor little 


PAULA 


183 


girl! If she had made a mistake after all! 

Neither spoke for a long time, then he said, 
‘‘Are you unhappy, Paula? I came to congratu- 
late you. Every one is talking of you and your 
success.” 

“Yes; oh yes, I know,” she said in a suffocated 
voice. “But is it worth it? Oh, you don’t know 
what I have suffered,” she added, drawing away 
her hand and burying her face in the sofa cushions 
with a sudden outburst of sobbing, “last night 
and this morning.” 

Vincent sat silent, looking down at the rugs at 
their feet. His face had grown very pale. The 
low anguished sobs beat through the room. His 
keen eyes had noted at once the great violet bruise 
that was spreading now all over one side of the 
girl’s face, and the sight of it half paralysed his 
voice. 

“I have suffered too,” he said at last, in a low 
tone. “I had no sleep last night. I have not 
closed my eyes, as you can imagine, since I saw 
you last ; but I thought at least you were content 
and satisfied with the arrangement.” 

“Oh, yes, yes,” sobbed Paula, sitting up and 
clasping his nerveless hand between her two burn- 
ing palms. “You have been most dear and good 
to me: you have done all you could. Your love 
is something quite different from other men’s, and 
now I have lost you . . . irrevocably cut myself 
off from you for ever and ever . . . don’t you 
understand what I feel?” and she bowed her 


184 


PAULA 


head forward on his hand, and pressed her fore- 
head on it in an agony of weeping. 

Vincent sat quite silent and motionless : watch- 
ing him one might have thought he was unmoved, 
untouched, except for the increasing pallor of his 
face and the deepening of the lines of pain about 
his set mouth. He had never anticipated this. It 
had crossed his mind as a fitful fear several times, 
that if, after irrevocably tying herself, the play 
should not succeed? Then he felt Paula’s deso- 
lation would be intense; but after the singular, 
the unequivocal triumph of last night, all doubts 
had been allayed. It is the best for her, he had 
thought in the midst of his own pain, as the mul- 
titude had applauded, with the shouting and the 
clapping in his ears, and the sweet figure with its 
face alight with happiness before his eyes. It 
is the best for her! This must be the extreme of 
pleasure, the best that life can give, for her. And 
after seeing this and thinldng thus, it had never 
faintly occurred to him that he could find her 
other than supremely content. She had volun- 
tarily sacrificed everything else for this one object 
which she had most undoubtedly obtained to the 
full, and now this despairing agony was incom- 
prehensible as well as terrible. 

Vincent could not quite fathom nor gauge— 
perhaps no one but an artist can — that fierce, 
intolerable craving of the artist for recognition; 
it is as blind, as unreasoning, as implacable as 
hunger until satisfied, and then when the craving 


PAULA 


185 


is assuaged the blinded eyes are clear to see again. 
That desire, like every other, has a ferocity, a 
mad intensity before gratification, that in no way 
is equalled nor even faintly approached by the 
joy its fulfilment can confer. In the frenzy of 
his ambition, when carried away by the exaltation 
and enthusiasm, the artist will accept everything, 
consent to anything, for the sake of his art. His 
life itself seems of no consequence beside it; but 
this almost superhuman, this transitory fervour 
past, his art ceases to console him for the ashes 
of his ruined life. But Vincent, though he could 
not exactly trace her sorrow to its source, saw the 
reality of it and the intensity, and he felt acutely 
there had been a false step somewhere, that in 
some way she had missed the path to her happi- 
ness. And the room in its warm afternoon light 
seemed to grow grey around him as he realised 
it, listening to those convulsive sobs. 

“Paula, listen to me,” he said at last, moving 
his hand, still clasped in hers, and drenched by 
her hot tears. “I want to speak to you.” 

Paula raised her head and looked at him. 

“What is it? tell me all. You chose this course 
yourself,” he said very gently. “What is the 
meaning of this great bruise? What is the mat- 
ter? Is Reeves ” 

“No, oh no; I have no fault to find. Reeves is 
very good and kind to me. But it is you I want, 
you I love. I want to be with you,” she said 
passionately, slipping to her knees from the couch 


186 


PAULA 


and kneeling so at his feet before him while she 
raised her face to his. “And now I have lost you 
utterly. I feel it, I know it. It was for you 
principally I wanted to succeed. I wanted to 
show you all I could do, to let you see my powers. 
It was you all the way through; I longed so to 
shine in your eyes, I wanted to prove to you that 
you had the love not only of an ordinary little 
girl like any other, but of one who could be great 
if she chose : it was a love worthy of you — worthy 
of your acceptance — I got blinded. I did not feel 
as if I were losing you — and now — and now, 
nothing is anything to me without you.” 

The words poured in one unbroken stream 
from her lips, her pallid face looked grey, the 
tears flowed unchecked from beneath her swelled 
eyelids as she gazed up longingly, despairingly, 
into his grave face above her. Vincent looked 
down upon her and put his arms around her, 
folding her a little closer to him, very gently, as 
one might a sobbing child. 

To many men, perhaps to most, to see this 
figure that last night had been the magnet for 
hundreds of admiring eyes, kneeling thus at his 
feet, broken and weeping, desolated in the midst 
of her triumph, because he was lost to her, would 
have brought, if not arrogant pleasure, at least 
a glow of satisfied self-love and pride. To Vin- 
cent it only brought the keenest pain. To his 
refined, sensitive mind it seemed horrible, an 
unnatural anomaly, as it seemed sometimes when 


PAULA^ 


18T 


the pheasants fell before his gun. It was satis- 
factory to know one’s skill, but all pleasure was 
lost in the vague sense that it was misdirected 
against a thing both beautiful and harmless, a 
perversion of power. So here he saw how great 
his influence was, to possess so much over another 
human life, and for it but to mean the wrecking 
and the breaking and the ruin of it, filled him 
with revolt against himself. 

“There is only one thing to be done now, 
Paula,” he said at last, “to accept your life as it 
is. You have a brilliant success; live in the 
thought of that as far as you can. Throw me 
out of your recollection entirely. I am leaving 
England to-day, and shall not come back for 
years; perhaps I may never come back. Cease 
to think of me, darling, as living; that is the only 
thing to be done now.” 

He felt her tremble violently in his arms: it 
reminded him of the death-quiver of a shot bird. 
“I am so sorry I came back now,” he murmured, 
in desperate self-reproach, “but you told me to 
come to see you and witness your triumph, and 
I did not think you cared for me still in this way.” 
He might have added with justice, “I never could 
have supposed you would have married another 
if you had;” but it was not his way to reproach 
anybody but himself. 

“Paula, do you understand me?” he went on 
after a second, as she made no answer. His own 
agony, his own jealousy, his own sickness of de- 


188 


•PAULA 


sire, were swept away utterly in his sudden terror 
for her and her future. “You must do this; 
it’s the only way to make your life livable; it’s 
no use to think of the past, not even to glance 
at it. Live for your art now.” 

“I have killed myself for it.” 

“No; you have only just begun to live. In a 
year’s time, or less, you will have succeeded in 
forgetting me if you try.” 

“Will you come back in a year, and see if I 
have forgotten?” 

Vincent shook his head, looking down into the 
bloodshot, swimming eyes. “You have to face 
your life without me. It is useless to look for 
my return; as useless as the return itself would 
be.” 

Paula said nothing. She only grew very cold 
and trembled excessively. Vincent felt he ought 
to leave her, and had no strength to unlock his 
arms and rise. Minutes of agony passed, and 
each second that the clock ticked out seemed to 
physicallj^ wound the girl’s sick brain. At last 
Vincent bent over her and kissed her, and she 
know the moment of their farewell had come. He 
lifted her on to the couch. She slipped from his 
arms down on to it, and lay there as a corpse. 
Vincent hesitated beside her. It was the corpse 
of the woman he had known. As he went down 
and through the hall, his eye caught the marble 
plate on the side-table. As he had passed it 
before he had noticed it was empty, now a num- 


PAULA 


189 


ber of cards, small narrow ones predominating, 
filled it. 

“She was at home to no one but you, sir,” said 
the servant, with a badly concealed grin, as he 
noticed Vincent’s glance at the plate. Vincent 
recognised her reckless indifference to appear- 
ances. He said nothing, and passed out. In the 
bright sunlight of Piccadilly he paused to look 
once more in at the photographs that hung in a 
line along the middle of the glass panes of the 
shop windows, and attracted a little crowd of 
young men in irreproachable frock-coats and 
hats, and with high white collars round their cran- 
ing necks. He stood amongst them, listening 
with sad dulled perception to their remarks, and 
looldng into the brilliant eyes that laughed at him 
across the glass. 

Was there really any truth in the legend of 
the Envy of the Gods? he wondered sadly as he 
heard the admiring comments and the openly 
expressed enviousness of the women standing 
just in front of him, and recalled the smitten 
figure he had left. A portrait of Reeves was 
stuck up beside hers, and there were many com- 
ments anent him and the marriage. Opinions 
that he was “a lucky devil” were freely volun- 
teered. Hypotheses of changing places with him 
were mockingly exchanged, and Vincent hearing, 
suddenly pushed his way violently out of the little 
ring, feeling the wild brute jealousy surge up 
again in hot angry waves from the darkest re- 


190 


PAULA 


cesses of his soul. Not his, but mine! shouted 
all the instincts within him, and they clamoured 
the fiercer because he knew that every one of 
those men he left behind to stare at her portrait 
would envy him, if they knew, even his pain. 


IX 


Nearly ten months had gone by since Paula’s 
marriage, and her life had flowed evenly along 
in its channel of success. Her name was well 
known now all over England, and familiarly 
gossiped about in the dramatic world in America. 
Her own play, “Fidelia,” was still running, and 
every night the house was crowded as it had been 
from the first. Her talents were undisputed, her 
right to the enviable and much envied position she 
had obtained, unquestioned. For ten months her 
life had been a buoyant floating on a rising tide 
of ease, prosperity, success, fame and admira- 
tion; and to herself these ten months had been 
empty, barren of pleasure. For ten months her 
art and her genius had been fed and satisfied, 
and had given her all they could in return; and 
for ten months her nature had been slowly grind- 
ing her small between its mill-stones. 

The admiration had ceased to stimulate, the 
fame had ceased to charm, the success became a 
thing to be taken for granted. The very exercise 
of her powers, the nightly attendance at the 
theatre had become a drag, a wearisome necessity, 
a duty and a work in which her spirit was broken. 
The companionship of her husband was irksome, 
tedious without being repulsive: he was not un- 


102 


PAULA 


kind, he was not cruel, he was simply a bore. The 
troubles and pains of her life now were not acute 
ones; there was one large, wide, overspreading, 
heavy trouble — the deadly monotony of it, the 
dreary emptiness, the sense of waste, the sense of 
the absence of pleasure. This life that to others 
seemed so brilliant, was to the one who lived it 
a grey, colourless desolation. And to a volcanic 
nature like Paula’s, any form of life was better 
suited than a painless and pleasureless inertia. 
Her passions did not die in it; they simply slept 
uneasily, tossing and stirring low down in the 
depths of her nature, and sending a sickness all 
through it. 

She had been working hard. She worked 
incessantly, so none of her trouble could be traced 
to the morbidness of an idle woman. She had 
written and completed a new play that was ready 
for production now, had had her own part to 
rehearse, and new dances to invent and then 
practise, besides superintending all the other 
parts and the staging of the whole. She practised 
her dancing untiringly, and perhaps in those 
hours spent before the glasses, arranged so that 
she could see every pose and attitude — ^hours 
when the reflections gave back to her her flushed 
cheeks and leaping bosom, some of the old joy in 
her art came to her again; but mere work with- 
out some great aim to accomplish, some great 
obstacles to conquer, was not enough to fill up 
her life, though it might use up her time. Now 


PAULA 


193 


her aim was accomplished and she had no ob- 
stacles to vanquish, since no one now denied her 
the recognition she had once thirsted for so 
savagely. She worked merely to maintain the 
place she had won, and there grew into the work 
something mechanical which was different from 
the enthusiasm of the winning. Besides, a dis- 
position like hers, with its immense capacity of 
loving, needed, and always would need, some- 
thing sweeter and nearer in life than the applause 
of the multitude. 

As distraction from the work, she had un- 
limited society, and of the intellectual and artistic 
kind she liked; she had also that which would 
have been, certainly for most women, an allevia- 
tion of life — flirtations without number; but 
Paula, though she flirted in a half-hearted, pas- 
sionless sort of way, did so rather because it gave 
the men who admired her pleasure, and because it 
was more or less expected of her in her character 
of popular actress, by her husband as well as every- 
body else, than it gave her personal amusement. 

She was filled with a slow consuming dislike of 
her husband — a dislike that she felt was unjust 
and partly cruel, and that she fought with daily 
and hourly, but in vain : it grew in spite of her- 
self, it spread throughout her whole moral sys- 
tem, and she was conscious of it spreading without 
the power to stay it. Sometimes this dislike, this 
distaste, rose almost to hatred within her, and in 
such moments she would passionately try to sub- 


194 


PAULA 


due it, to wrench it out of her heart. It was a 
plant that was foreign to that soil, and its 
unnatural growth hurt her. Like the Greek 
Antigone, hers was a nature that was born for 
loving not hating, and the presence of this feeling, 
that she tried hard to control and could not, 
troubled her almost as much as the presence of the 
man who excited it. 

Reeves had been the means by which she had 
blighted her life as well as made it, but any injury 
he had caused in the past, had it ended in the past, 
she would have forgiven easily: that was not the 
root of resentment against him now. It was the 
fact that he, and he alone, stood between her now, 
at the present time, hourly, momentarily, and her 
happiness ; that he was the barrier between 
her and her desires, the chain bound round her 
cramped soul, thirsting after its liberty. She 
could not forgive this, could not forget it; be- 
cause it was an ever-recurring injury, she could 
perpetually fight against her resentment of it, 
and that was all she could do. He was the block 
in the path to everything she most wished and 
longed for. And at times she hated him with 
an intensity proportionate to the intensity of the 
desires he frustrated. 

She could not help nor destroy nor lessen this 
violence of all her feelings, any more than she 
could alter the rapid circulation of the blood in 
her veins, make the warm current lethargic and 
the quick pulses beat slowly. She could keep 


PAULA 


195 


reins upon her actions and words, a perpetual 
repression upon herself, and that was all. This 
she did, and the constant warfare within told 
upon her and took away her strength, little by 
little. Nature was slowly, inexorably, resist- 
lessly destroying the one who had dared to defy 
her commands. 

It was Sunday afternoon, and she was crouch- 
ing over the fire. It was dusk already, for the 
rain poured steadily outside from the black, fog- 
laden sky. Behind her stretched the long draw- 
ing-room, with the shadows gambolling and 
frisking through and about the furniture as the 
flames leapt amongst the coals in the grate. She 
sat with her hands outstretched to the fire, and 
eyes staring down into its red heart. She had 
I sat there over an hour, when a sudden ring, 

I followed by a knock, went through the perfect 
I stillness of the flat. She started violently, recog- 
I nising Vincent’s knock directly. In a few sec- 
1 onds he came in, and she rose and stood by the 
hearth, with the light of the fire behind her. He 
saw that her figure had rounded, grown fuller, 
' and seemed even more supple than formerly; 

1 the fire-glow burned on her soft light hair as 
' she stood waiting. He came forward and shook 
hands, remembering vaguely that she at one time 
; used to advance to him; now she waited merely, 
J and when they had shaken hands, dropped back 
' into the chair and her old position, 
f ‘T have only just come back; my first visit is 


196 


PAULA 


to you. I could not stay away any longer,” he 
said, as she did not speak. “I wish I could see 
you looking a httle happier.” 

“I can never be happy,” returned Paula in a 
low voice. “Where have you been?” 

“In Austraha, at work,” he said. There was 
a long silence. 

“Have you ever thought of me?” she asked. 
The tone was low. There was a desperate accent 
in it, and a peculiar meaning. It seemed to go 
through the room. 

“Yes. Far too often for my own peace.” 

“Have you been alone all this time?” The 
voice came hard, as if it was difficult for her to 
form the question. 

“Quite alone,” he answered. There was a 
deep, long silence. It seemed a great gulf be- 
tween them. Neither met the other’s eyes. A 
fierce delight and a horrible sense of approaching 
danger seemed fighting together in the air above 
their heads. Paula looked at him at last, with 
dry, white lips. 

“Take me to live with you now,” she said in 
a low tone. 

Vincent did not answer: his heart gave one 
great leap at her words, hut the thought, “You 
must not,” came immediately after and held him 
silent. He sat back motionless in the arm-chair, 
his chin resting upon one hand, his eyes fixed 
upon her. Paula’s gaze met them through a dim 
hot mist of tears. 


PAULA 


197 


''Are you so unhappy?” he said quietly, at 
length. 

“Unhappy!” echoed Paula, lying back also in 
her chair and letting both arms overhang the 
sides despairingly. “I am dying; morally and 
physically — can’t you see it?” Then she added; 

“But you haven’t seen me yet ” and she bent 

down with one of her impulsive movements, 
seized the brass poker from the fender, and stirred 
the fire into one brilliant gaseous blaze. “Now 
look at me,” and she leant forward so that the 
' light illuminated all her face and looked at him 
! through it. 

Some of its own natural sweetness came hack 
to it as she looked into his eyes, but he saw the 
hollows beneath the eyebrow bone, the hungry 
fierceness in the wide pupils, the hard dragged 
i look about the mouth; on it all was the impress, 
the seal of her thwarted, starved and driven, but 
i unconquered nature. Vincent looked at her in- 
tently and could not read nor name the strange, 
and to a practised eye, fearful expression of her 
face. His life was given to practical pleasures 
and pains, not to the psychological analyses of 
them, and the simple impression produced upon 
him found expression in the simple phrase, “You 
! don’t look well, dear.” But a tremendous pity 
I was stirred in him and a vague alarm by her 
look, though he could not classify it and docket 
it with its full meaning. 

“Let me come to you,” she said again, plead- 


tl98 


PAULA 


ingly, and the music of the tones was incompar- 
able; it came into them unconsciously when she 
was with him just as the sweetness to her face. 
It was a voice now that Reeves and others never 
heard. “Take me to live with you,” she mur- 
mured, and the tears welled up in her eyes and 
fell slowly, like drops of blood in the firelight, as 
she still sat forward with her arms leaning on her 
knees and her hands clasped. “I have tried to 
live with him, have tried to follow my art, have 
tried to do all you told me, but it is killing me; 
and this man kills me, he draws out and develops 
all that is bad in me, so that I don’t recognise 
myself. I hate him and loathe him, though I 
fight against it day and night, and this existence 
debases and degrades me. It can’t be right, it 
can’t be well, to go on with it. It is destroying 
every good quality within me. I would give up 
everything, sacrifice the world, lay down my art, 
to respect myself again. Living with you even 
as your servant would be a better state than living 
as I do now.” 

There was silence except for the light crackling 
of the fire, which threw its glow over their faces 
and showed them to each other — the man’s grave 
and drawn, the woman’s pallid and desperate. 
Their mutual passion seemed like a huge, breath- 
ing, living beast crouched between them in the 
firelight, oppressing them both with the con- 
sciousness of its presence. And this monster now 
was but that same innocent, joyous affection they 


PAULA 


199 


had felt a few months back transformed by cir- 
cumstances. It is one of the commonest revenges 
of Nature for her slighted goods. Constantly in 
youth she proffers to the heedless human being 
her richest gift without payment, in innocent 
freedom, and constantly it is then passed by, and 
sooner or later in after years he is forced to buy 
it in blood and tears, and at the price of his soul. 
Something of all this forced itself painfully on 
the man as he sat there. 

“Why have you put yourself in such a painful 
position?” he said slowly, at last. “You would 
not come to me before; now to leave him might 
only be another mistake.” 

“But you would like me to, wouldn’t you?” 
she said in a barely audible whisper, stifled by a 
sense of shame. 

“I should like nothing that would end in your 
unhappiness,” returned Vincent quietly. Then 
there was a long silence, in which the sound of 
their own hearts seemed throbbing loudly through 
the room. 

“I should be so sorry to overthrow all that 
your work has produced,” he said after a minute ; 
“can’t you see that? I see that there’s a new play 
announced; that’s your own, of course?” 

Paula nodded. 

“You have so much now — you’ve achieved so 
much in your art.” 

“Yes; but one’s art cannot console one for 
breaking the first law of one’s nature.” 


200 


PAULA 


‘‘Did I not tell you that before you married?” 

“I know you did, but I was blind then. I can 
see the truth now, and I want to undo the error.” 

“I am afraid it’s too late.” 

“That means, I suppose, you don’t care for me 
any more?” 

Vincent got up, feeling his judgment leaving 
him. “No; I am accustomed to mean what I say. 
I am afraid it is too late to secure your own 
happiness now, whatever we do.” 

“I will do anything you tell me,” she said im- 
pulsively, and pressed her soft lips on his hand. 

He smiled a little sadly. “If you would have 
done what I told you all along, you would have 
saved us both a good deal of suffering,” he said 
gently. “Good-bye dear; I shall be at the theatre 
to-morrow evening, and all this week. Let me 
see you doing your very best.” 

“You shall,” murmured Paula, and he went 
out. When he was gone she got up and went 
upstairs, turned the key in the lock of the bed- 
room door, and threw herself face downwards on 
thevbed, praying, in the wild passionate way in 
which she had prayed from her childhood up- 
wards, to some vague God only half believed in, 
praying for some help and guidance in the dark 
night that had overtaken her in the morning of 
her life. 

Vincent walked into Piccadilly and down it 
with a pale and abstracted face. He was accus- 
tomed to do that which he considered the right 


PAULA 


201 


without either praying or weeping over it, but 
here his path was not well defined, and he felt 
how easily the worse might appear the better 
reason. Had Paula been a different woman, with 
a more tractable, docile nature, with less self-will, 
and of a lower-strung temperament, he would 
have tried to maintain his present position for 
her sake, thinking that in time she might settle 
down in the life she had chosen. But in a nature 
like this, so fierce, almost savage, in its instincts 
and desires, he dreaded the result of this con- 
tinued repression. He might urge her to accept 
her life, but he had a sad experience of her obedi- 
ence to others, even to himself. It was a some- 
what mythical quality. 

Vincent was at the theatre the following even- 
ing, and all the subsequent ones of that week, as 
he had promised her, but he did not come to her 
house, nor did he hear from her. Her eyes met 
his over the flare of the footlights and two rows 
of well-filled stalls, with a mute supplication — 
i that was all. Night after night, as he lay sleep- 
i less and wretched, her face rose before him, with 
I its terrible look of revolt and appeal. That must 
i find its expression at last, if not in the sweeter, 

I more human fault of coming to his arms, then 
possibly in some horrible, unnatural way — and 
here thought stopped short. He could not con- 
template further. 

He hesitated to take her out of her life now, 

‘ but he could not help feeling it was more fashion, 


202 


PAULA 


custom and prejudice, that was influencing him 
than the ethical right of the question. “Before 
her marriage,” he thought, “I called it prostitu- 
tion; yet if by chance she had fallen to that, I 
should have no doubt but that I ought to take 
her from it now.” Had she made any other mis- 
take, been misguided in any other matter but 
marriage, no one would have blamed her for try- 
ing to undo the error. In the question of mar- 
riage alone, it is not allowed to the human being 
to come forward frankly and say, “I have made a 
mistake: let me undo it as far as I can: give me 
a fresh start, let me try to do better.” In all 
other phases of life the man who starts on a 
wrong road and turns resolutely back from it is 
applauded for his courage. In marriage alone 
the world says, “If you And yourself on the 
wrong road, tread it to the grave.” He thought 
and rethought these things, his brain working in 
an agonising circle, and the days slipped by with- 
out brir^ing him any nearer a decision. 


X 


Sunday had come round again, and the afternoon 
found Paula walking round and round her draw- 
ing-room just as the Hon paces round and round 
its cage. Reeves had gone out to luncheon and 
would not be back till their dinner-hour; he had 
pressed Paula to come, but she had excused her- 
self on the ground of feeling ill. Her drawn, 
haggard face and feverish eyes fully bore out her 
statement, and Reeves had left protesting he 
would not be long, he would come back early, and 
so on. ‘‘Oh, be away as long as you can,” was 
Paula’s inward impatient comment, and she 
watched him go with a feeling of relief. Lunch- 
eon was served for her alone, and after attempt- 
ing to eat and failing, she went back to the 
drawing-room to resume her aimless walk. She 
tried to think, but in some curious way she seemed 
losing control over her thoughts. Clear, consecu- 
tive thought seemed impossible to her now. If 
she took the simplest subject she could not think 
it out to the end. “What is the matter with me?” 
she asked herself, and a sort of sick horror crept 
over her. She went up to the cases of books that 
stood facing her against the wall and read their 
titles over to herself. They seemed to convey 
no meaning to her. She took out one, a copy of 


204 


PAULA 


Martial, and turned over its leaves, but she could 
not her attention on any line in it. It seemed 
like an unknown, unfamiliar thing. “And Latin 
used to be so easy and so interesting. What can 
be the matter?” 

She turned from the books, the tears welling 
up to her eyes, and looked round the room. 
There was nothing to answer her ; the fire crackled 
softly through the silence, the handsome furniture 
stood unmoved in its place. She crossed back 
again to the table, and took up one of the papers 
Ijdng on it ; but that she could npt read for more 
than a few seconds together. An indescribable 
feeling of illness took possession of her if she 
tried to force her attention further. She laid 
the paper down and passed on to the window, 
and stood there leaning her head against the 
pane. “I suppose it will snow,” she thought, and 
thought this several times over without realising 
it. She moved away after a few minutes, and 
walked round the room again, only conscious of 
an intense feeling of illness. “Now so idiotic 
and once so clever,” she thought, “and only ten 
months ago.” 

At the end of the room stood a small cabinet. 
She went up to it suddenly, turned the key in it, 
and opened it. It was full of her own MSS., 
whole plays and scenes and parts of scenes. She 
drew out some loose paper and read at random, 
kneeling on the floor. A sense of the merit of the 
work forced itself upon her. “Yes, it’s good,” 


PAULA 


205 


she thought to herself. “It is good, and I shall 
never write like that again — never.” She thrust 
all the papers back, and relocked the door. “Yes, 
I was clever,” she thought, rising from her knees, 
“but it’s past now. My cleverness is gone, like 
everything else.” She recommenced her weary 

walk. The palms of her hands were burning, a 
dull pain rose from the back of her neck and 
reached to the top of her forehead, holding all 
the back of her head in an iron grip. She went 
round the room, leaning at intervals against the 

wall. 

“Vincent? Will hd come this afternoon or 
not?” she asked herself. It seemed the only 
thing she cared for, the only thing that she could 
understand. Her limbs trembled, the grasp of 
her hand on the chairs she passed was uncertain, 
yet move she must. She knew what her illness 
was. It was the revenge of her outraged being. 
Her nature, that she had dared to trample on, had 
risen and faced her now, and she knew it was 
stronger than she. She sat down after a time 
from sheer fatigue and leaned her head in her 
hands. She recognised that her suffering was 
just, that she had merited it all. She had 
attempted the impossible. She had tried to 
subdue the great natural impulses, to crush them 
down and make them subservient to one artificial 
engrafted desire. 

“I ought to have known I could not do it — 
could not keep it up,” she thought. It was 


200 


PAULA 


sustaining the long-drawn-out conflict she felt 
unequal to, and it is in this that our ever-present 
Nature has the advantage over us. An individual 
can conquer his Nature once, as Paula in her 
enthusiasm could have cut off her hand for the 
sake of her mental desires ; but in the slow hourly 
conflict that goes on day by day, it is impossible 
for the human being to be triumphant, because 
the very force with which he is fighting is taken 
from him minute by minute. All the splendid 
energies divinely implanted in this girl’s body 
and brain were given now, squandered in the 
pitiful hourly struggle against overpowering 
forces. The greater the energy, the stronger the 
individual’s will, the more deplorable, the more 
extravagant the waste; in this useless conflict 
against eternal powers, it is as a child’s hand 
striking a brick wall. 

At five her own maid brought her a cup of tea. 
Paula took it in silence. The girl offered to light 
the gas. No, her mistress preferred to sit in the 
dusk. Then the maid lingered at the door. 
“Well, what is it?” asked Paula. 

“Please, mum, could I go to church this even- 
ing? I know it’s not my Sunday out, but ” 

“Go to church,” repeated Paula. “No, you 
can’t this evening; I may want my hair done. 
Why have you become so religious all of a sud- 
den?” The girl made no answer, and withdrew. 

Paula sat on by the fire absorbed in her own 
pain, and then after a few minutes the sound of 


PAULA 


207j 


sobbing reached her in the silence of the room. 
Always sympathetic to the sorrows of others, she 
got up mechanically and went to the door, opened 
it, and stood for a second in the dusk of the 
threshold. The sound of sobbing was quite dis- 
tinct now and came from the kitchen, which lay 
at the end of the passage facing her. She walked 
along it, and as she approached the kitchen door 
she heard a suffocated voice repeating, “And him 
going to Cape Town to-morrow too; it’s cruel.” 
She pushed open the door, and saw her maid sit- 
ting in the empty kitchen by the fire with her 
head bowed on her hands, as her mistress had sat 
in her drawing-room. 

“Louie, what are you crying for? Who’s going 
to Cape Town?” 

“My young man, mum,” murmured the girl. 

“Is it he you want to see then this evening?” 

“Yes, mum,” sobbed the girl. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” said Paula, open- 
eyed. “Of course you can go for that.” 

“And what about your hair, mum?” said the 
girl gratefully, looking up and drying her eyes. 

“Oh, I will manage somehow without you; but 
what on earth made you say you wanted to go 
to church?” 

“Well, mum, ninety-nine mistresses out of a 
hundred would let you go to church, and they 
wouldn’t let you go anigh your young man fer 
anything, if they could help it.” 

“Oh, I see. Well, go at once if you like; but if 


208 


PAULA 


you’re so fond of your young man, take my advice 
and keep him with you.” 

“Oh, I would if I could, no fear, but I can’t, 
mum,” said the girl sorrowfully; “he will go, he’s 
like mad on it. He’d never go if I had my way.” 

“I am sorry,” said Paula softly; “well, run off 
now and spend a long evening with him anyway.” 

And while the girl was thanking her she with- 
drew gently, and went hack to her own room. It 
was very dark, but some light from the now fall- 
ing snow entered at the long windows, and the 
fire burned cheerily. Between these half lights, 
Paula’s eyes rested on the stone cast of Vincent 
that she had begged him before her marriage to 
give her instead of a photograph. It was a life- 
sized bust, and stood on a moderately high pedes- 
tal against a velvet curtain, facing you as you 
entered the door. As the lights flickered across 
the face it almost seemed to smile,, and Paula 
crossed towards it and flung her arms round the 
shoulders and drew the bust close till the cold 
stone rested on the warm human bosom. Then 
she bent over it and kissed the bps in a passion 
of blinding tears. “Sorrow and suffering and 
parting everywhere,” she murmured, thinking 
of the girl she had just left. “But you would 
have spared it all to me. I have brought it all 
upon myself. You would have saved me.” 

She stood there with her hot tears falling on the 
stone and laid her head at last down upon the 
shoulder, and twisted her arms tightly about its 


PAULA 


209 


neck. She was unconscious of how the time 
passed. Her brain, exhausted and weakened now 
by the pressure of one ever-present desire, sank 
easily into stupor. She welcomed it: it meant 
peace. The fire died down, hut still she did not 
move, and she was still standing there when the 
door opened and Reeves entered. 

The room was almost dark, but a dim light 
falling through the curtains was enough to show 
her attitude and catch the whiteness of the stone. 
He had come in with his key, and Paula, absorbed 
in herself, had not heard him. As the handle of 
the sitting-room door squeaked in his hand she 
started and moved from the pedestal, but not 
before he had seen her clearly standing there. 
“What on earth are you doing, Paula?” he said, 
coming up to her. 

Paula did not answer. The fear of involving 
Vincent against his will in her affairs fell upon 
her and held her silent. Inwardly she cursed 
herself for having been found and taken by sur- 
prise. 

“Oh, I saw it all,” returned Reeves; “you were 
kissing that bust of Vincent, and I suppose that's 
how you go on with the flesh-and-blood original 
when he’s at hand.” His face was white with 
surprised and jealous anger Paula could divine 
the expression of it in the tones of his voice, 
though she could not see it. She stepped to the 
mantelpiece and turned the handle belonging to 
the electric light. It illumined the lamp and 


210 


PAULA 


burners all over the room on the instant, and 
flooded both their countenances. She preferred 
to face him fully in it. 

“Your supposition is quite wrong then,” she 
said coldly, flinging herself into one of the easy- 
chairs by the hearth. Her face was pale, the signs 
of tears were plain upon it, the traces of the long 
afternoon’s conflict with her passions were visible 
in a look of pain and illness. 

“H’m,” said Reeves satirically. 

Paula was silent, for very fear of making mat- 
ters worse by anything she might say. Her heart 
beat to suffocation. For herself she cared noth- 
ing, but to drag Vincent into an unsought, un- 
merited conflict with her husband was the very 
last thing she desired. 

Reeves walked about the room in silence, biting 
nervously the cigar he had been smoking. “Well, 
will you kindly tell the servants,” he said at last, 
“to say you’re not at home whenever Vincent 
calls in future? You see, I can’t quite think those 
rehearsals go for nothing. Do you understand?” 
he added, as she did not answer. 

“I hear what you say, if that’s what you mean,” 
returned Paula. She was sitting back in her chair 
now, swinging one foot idly backwards and for- 
wards. 

Almost any man would have seen that it was 
a dangerous moment to try to use coercion. All 
the impetuous, passionate nature was already 
aflame. There was an angry light beneath her 


PAULA 


211 


lids, and her nostrils beat nervously, but Reeves 
saw nothing, blinded by his own jealous rage. 

“Well, do you mean to do it?” he said, stopping 
in front of her. 

“No, most certainly not,” returned Paula, 
looking up, an arrogant defiance in every line of 
the pale face; “I shall receive Vincent, or any- 
body else, whenever and as often as I choose. 
IVe told you there’s nothing between us. If you 
think there is, that’s your fault.” 

“I don’t say what I think. I shan’t allow you 
to see him, that’s all.” 

“Allow!” repeated Paula, contemptuously. 
Her eyes rested on him, alight with scorn and 
resentment ; her bosom heaved and her lips quiv- 
ered. Lying back there in the chair, she seemed 
like a young, supple, newly caged panther, en- 
raged and waiting to' spring. 

“Yes, allow,” repeated Reeves, angrily; “this 
is my house, and my servants shall have orders 
about him from me, that’s all.” 

Paula got up suddenly from her chair. She 
was as pale as the stone cast itself. In that mo- 
ment the resolve that had been drifting about 
in her mind, half formed through ten long 
months of suffering, crystallised itself. 

“My dear fellow,” she said to Reeves, with a 
mocking smile, “you may give whatever orders 
you like to your servants;” and she crossed the 
room and went out without another word, and 
before Reeves had the thought to stop her. 


212 


PAULA 


She went upstairs, every limb and muscle 
quivering with rage. In her room she turned on 
the light and went straight to the armoire and 
got out a black velvet hat and jacket. She put 
on the jacket, fastening it with rapid trembling 
fingers, and crossed to the glass to put on her 
hat. She had conscious instincts enough left to 
make her dress well and carefully; the face that 
looked back from the glass was whiter than ash 
dust and ablaze with excitement; never had it 
looked better; the pallor and the brilliance of it 
struck her even through her rage, and filled her 
with a sense of pleasure and triumph. She set 
the hat on her light curls and pushed them into 
place under the wide velvet brim. Then she 
opened a drawer and took out gloves and a dark 
veil and a jewel box. She unlocked it, and 
counted twenty sovereigns from a bag into her 
ordinary leather purse, added a ten-pound note, 
and then relocked the box. As she did so her eyes 
fell on the rings that sparkled and flashed all over 
the smooth white fingers. The plain gold band 
of her wedding-ring shone amongst them. She 
clenched her teeth hard and commenced to tear 
them off. When she had slipped off her wedding- 
ring, she took it over to the grate, and kneeling 
down on the hearth-rug, held the ring firmly in 
her left hand, finger and thumb on its edge, and 
lifted the heavy brass poker with the other. One 
blow upon it and the circle was split, the ring lay 
burst into its flattened halves on the rug. The 


PAUOl 


213 


accumulated rage and hatred of many months, 
the long-controlled misery and revolt of all her 
married life, was in that blow: it only took a 
second or so. She picked up the pieces and rose, 
took up a small handbag that contained things 
for her toilet, slipped the veil, purse, and gloves 
into it, snapped it, and turned to go. Her face 
now was cold and composed as a stone mask, 
through which were looldng two living blazing 
eyes. She walked downstairs and saw their room 
door open, and its light poured into the hall. 
Reeves came up to it as she was passing by. 

“Where are you going?” he asked, with a 
sudden deadly sinking of the heart, an apprehen- 
sion, a fear of — he could not tell what. The light 
from the open room fell full upon her. Her 
figure was dilated with the tumult of the feelings 
within her. Reeves stepped back involuntarily 
before the blinding hate in her face and eyes. 

‘T am going out — never to come back again,” 
she said, and the voice lost none of its music in 
its accent of merciless loathing. 

“Paula, listen, darling ” 

“You fool,” she said, half mockingly; and the 
marvellously expressive face, that made her power 
on the stage, showed now all the subtle changes of 
scorn and hate and derision as she looked back 
into his. A sense of the immense value she was 
to this man was borne in upon her. She read 
printed on his face even now the wild longing to 
bridge the gulf torn open between them. “Search 


214 


PAULA 


all London for my equal, and you will not find it.” 

“Paula, wait; I’ll do anything ” 

“I don’t care what you do,” returned Paula, 
and she flung the whole handful of rings she had 
brought downstairs at his feet. They rolled, 
glittering and sparkling, flashing with a thou- 
sand rays, in every direction, into all sorts of 
corners, over the white Wilton pile carpet, all 
except the smashed wedding-ring ; that could not 
roll, but lay in its two shattered fragments where 
she had flung it, just at his feet. 

Paula went on downstairs without another 
word, and out. Reeves, rushing after her, got 
down to the hall just in time to see the graceful 
figure in its dark clothes getting into a hansom. 
The next instant she was gone. 

He could have jumped into another cab and 
followed her, but he made sure she was going to 
Vincent. No other idea flashed upon him; that 
she was going straight to him was the one thought 
that possessed him, and he would go there straight 
too. Almost as white as she had been. Reeves 
reascended the stairs, cursing Vincent as he had 
never cursed any one in his life. 

“Great Northern Hotel,” Paula said to the 
cabman, and sat back behind the glass against 
which the snow beat furiously. She had not the 
faintest thought of going to Vincent’s rooms 
openly in this way, to throw the onus of the 
responsibility upon him without first hearing if 
he were prepared for it. Reeves, she anticipated, 


PAULA 


215 


would follow her, and then to take him to the 
man she would give up her hfe itself to shield 
from pain or danger was a plan which never sug- 
gested itself to her, just as no plan but this could 
force itself on Reeves’s mind. 

Paula meant to hide herself at the other end of 
London and summon Vincent to her there. 
There he could come without danger and without 
undertaking responsibility, and she could learn 
his wishes without compromising him. “Free,” 
she murmured to herself as she drove on, and she 
lay back against the cab cushions with a delighted 
quiver of the mouth and a sudden lighting of the 
eyes. 

When the lights of the Great Northern came in 
view she could hardly see them for the blur of 
half -frozen snow on the windows of the cab. As 
it stopped, she hastily fastened the black veil 
round her hat and let the glass down. She paid 
the cabman, and taking her handbag herself 
passed through the driving snow into the vestibule 
of the hotel. It was very crowded: the eight 
o’clock express from Burnley had just come in, 
and passengers, wrapped up to the eyes and laden 
^vith more or less snow-covered packages, were 
bustling to the manager’s desk or giving direc- 
tions about their luggage to the porters. It 
helped her to escape notice, which was her object 
just then. Even as it was she attracted a good 
many glances, and as she stood in the glaring 
light by the bureau, waiting her turn, she dreaded 


216 


PAULA 


at each minute to be recognised and addressed by 
name. When at length she could get up to the 
wire cage behind which the manageress was sit- 
ting, she gave the name of Mrs. Johnson, made 
no remark as to the absence of luggage, and fol- 
lowed the waiter upstairs, drawing her veil a little 
more closely down about her chin, and devoutly 
hoping none of the servants would recognise the 
figure they had perhaps only the night before 
yelled and kicked their approval of from the 
gallery or pit. She had asked for a bedroom 
and private sitting-room, and they gave her two 
rooms opening one into the other on the first 
floor. Hotel rooms are generally the picture of 
discomfort, but these two made a favourable 
exception; they were well furnished and well 
lighted. Paula ordered a fire to be lit and a cup 
of coffee brought her, and flung herself into an 
easy-chair, while the waiter pulled down the 
blinds and drew the heavy curtains to shut out the 
snow that whirled savagely in the darkness be- 
yond. 

As soon as the fire was well alight and the 
servants gone, she took up a telegraph-form from 
a side-table and addressed it to Vincent. Beneath 
she wrote: — ‘‘Come to me, if you possibly can, at 
once. I have broken with R. finally. — Paula, 
Room 21, Mrs. Johnson.” She drank the coffee 
they had brought, as she felt chilled with the 
drive, glanced in the glass, resettled her veil, 
and took up the telegram. All the evil passions 


PAULA 


217 


had passed from her face, all the hardness and 
mockery had disappeared, and the sweetness had 
come back to it at the thought of Vincent. “He 
will tell me what to do,’’ she murmured; and 
whatever that might be she felt she would do it 
to please him. 

She took the telegram herself into the station, 
and sent it off; then she stood hesitating for a 
second or two on the platform, thinking of , her 
now ringless third finger, and finally walked into 
the street instead of back to the hotel. It was 
snowing heavily, but she put up her umbrella, 
raised her skirts determinedly, and walked on fast 
against the wind. Then suddenly she remem- 
bered it was Sunday, and with a shrug of her 
shoulders at her own foolishness, she turned back 
; to the hotel. 

I As soon as Reeves had got into his fur coat and 
\ hat, he hurried down the stairs and hailed the first 
crawling hansom that passed his steps. He let 
down the glass mechanically, as the snow blew in 
stinging his face, and sat glaring through it with 
unseeing eyes. Deep down in one of his capacious 
fur pockets, where he had thrust his hand, he 
grasped a small, cold object, and his fingers met 
round its steel muzzle. He did not know himself 
what his intentions were. Had his life depended 
on it, he could not have given a coherent answer 
just then. His brain seemed twirling round, as 
one twirls a kaleidoscope; and now one picture, 
pne set of thoughts^ fitted themselves together, 


218 


PAULA 


only to break and re-form into another, just as the 
glass fragments in the toy. The principal feel- 
ing, perhaps, within him was a hatred, a jealous 
hatred, of Vincent ; the picture that formed itself 
most constantly was a portrait of him, of the calm, 
cold face and the graceful form. 

This, this, then, was the man she had always 
loved; this the chosen one out of the crowd that 
always hung about her. Why should he be the 
favoured one? this man who was — was — and — 
and — he stammered in his thoughts even. What 
he would have liked to say would have been a 
worthless, ignorant, hideous blockhead, and in- 
stead Vincent’s image forced itself between his 
thoughts, and he found himself repeating, — good- 
looking, good-looking, and gifted, very gifted. 
This, then, was the man of whom she had mur- 
mured that one little word when he had first 
brought her to consciousness on their wedding 
night. Her lips had been locked thereafter, and 
he had never heard it since, and he had tried to 
forget it, that one little endearing pet name. 
Just a short word, but it had bitten deeply into his 
mind, as steel into flesh. He had cast it out of 
his brain, but it had always crept back and nestled 
there again, like an adder with its tiny barbed 
tongue. And at night he had lain often with that 
tongue darting into him — “Whom do I belong to, 
eh? into whose ear and against whose neck have 
I been murmured? Not yours, eh? not yours?” 
And now he knew to whom those sweet lips had 


PAULA 


219 


said it. He muttered it again and again, and each 
time his fingers closed nervously on the revolver. 

In this frame of mind, unreasoning as a mad- 
dened animal, he jumped out almost before the 
cab had stopped at Vincent’s door, pulled vio- 
lently at the bell for his flat, and then rushed up 
the stairs. Vincent’s man-servant let him in at 
the flat door, and Reeves strode past him to the 
drawing-room and walked in. In a large arm- 
chair before the fire Vincent sat motionless, read- 
ing. A large shaded lamp stood just behind him, 
and at his side a low leather table covered with 
ponderous books of reference. The light from 
the reading lamp struck across his pale abstracted 
face and his slight white hand that held the vol- 
ume. An egg-shell china cup and saucer that he 
had used for his coffee stood on the mantelpiece. 
A small silent fire burnt at his feet. At the far 
end of the room his bedroom doors stood wide, 
open. Both rooms were well lighted, and a dead 
silence reigned, only broken by the steady muffled 
ticking of the large clock on the mantelpiece. 
Into this quiet atmosphere of study Reeves came 
impetuously, blazing with the tumult of passions 
fighting within him, and paused suddenly on the 
threshold. Instinctively he felt she was not here. 
Had she even passed through these rooms, that 
faint delicate scent, a subtle, barely perceptible 
perfume like the breath of roses, that always 
hovered over her, would have betrayed her : there 
had been no warring of emotions in this room, the 


220 


PAULA 


very air seemed cold and quiet as in a cloister. 
The young fellow looked round as his visitor en- 
tered. 

“Oh, Reeves,” he said quietly, “is that you? 
Come and sit down.” He closed the book and 
laid it with the others on the table, and then let 
his hands rest idly on his chair arms, as he looked 
up and watched the other stride heavily up to the 
hearth. Reeves stood looking savagely about the 
rooms for a few seconds, utterly confused by the 
difference of this scene from what he had pic- 
tured; then feeling he must speak, and unable to 
say anything but that which was seething in his 
mind, he stammered out — 

“Isn’t Paula here? I . . . I thought she was.” 

“Paula?” repeated Vincent in unfeigned sur- 
prise, but immediately getting on his guard. 
“No. Did you ask her to come for anything?” 

Reeves laughed, a short, cynical laugh, and 
looked down ironically at the figure in the chair. 
Vincent met his gaze with one of cold, steady 
inquiry. 

“I should be likely to do that, now, knowing 
what I know. So you’re the man she loves!” he 
added, the rage with which he had come bursting 
out again after its momentary check. “Well, 
I’ve often wanted to see the man Paula could love, 
and I’m much gratified.” 

Vincent, inwardly confused and dismayed, 
alarmed too for the girl, and much distressed, 
did not let a trace of any emotion show in his face 


PAULA 


221 


beyond an extreme iSurprise. ‘‘Isn’t this all rather 
wild?” he said quietly. “What do you mean?” 

Reeves stood on the rug, his face changing 
colour momentarily, his right hand pulling con- 
vulsively at something in his pocket, which he 
dragged up and thrust back unconsciously in his 
excitement. Vincent had not altered his position ; 
he leaned back, almost lying rather than sitting 
in his chair, his legs crossed, one arm outstretched 
along the chair arm, and the other hand raised 
now towards his forehead, while his elbow leaned 
upon the table. He watched Reeves and the 
action, the meaning of which he knew so well, 
with faint amusement. Reeves looked at him, 
too; and, even blind as he was with jealous rage, 
he did justice at that moment to the charm that 
there was in the easy attitude, the quiet voice, the 
extreme composure. “It’s the same thing,” he 
muttered, half to himself, half aloud, “whether 
she’s here or not: you’re the cause of it all.” 

“I wish you’d speak out,” said Vincent, with a 
touch of irritation. “It’s childish to go on like 
this. What’s the matter?” 

“The matter!” said Reeves. “The matter is 
that Paula has gone from me: smashed up her 
wedding-ring, and said she’s never coming back, 
because I objected to her standing with her arms 
round your marble head, kissing it.” 

Vincent paled slightly. Why would she be so 
reckless and so rash? he asked himself in dismay. 
How could he best protect her from herself? 


222 


PAULA 


And what did it all mean? Had she done it in 
open defiance of Reeves, or had he found her 
accidentally? 

“But probably this is only some freak of hers,” 
he said aloud, with a quiet smile ; “y^^ know how 
extraordinary she is. As for me, you can see for 
yourself she’s not come here.” 

“What does all this damned foolery of kissing 
mean, then?” muttered Reeves. “Are you her 
lover?” he demanded furiously, turning on Vin- 
cent suddenly. 

Vincent felt strongly inclined to kick him out 
of the place, but thinking still of Paula’s interests, 
he restrained himself. “No,” he said, emphati-.^*^ 
cally and savagely. Then he added with his 
former calm, “That sort of thing, with h?^; ' . 
means nothing. She admires that cast for it' 
workmanship, and might just as probably have 
kissed it had it been any one else’s.” 

Reeves hesitated. It was true that you could 
not judge of Paula quite as an ordinary woman. 
The artist in her gave her a double life and 
character; he knew that but too well, and he 
really had no proof against this man. Had that * 
little word that stung his memory been Vincent, 
then he should have been sure; but it was not, it 
was just a pet name, of which the original might 
be Dick for that matter, or anything else. Well, 
he would make a guess, and he pronounced it sud- 
denly out loud. The word rang through Vin- 
cent’s ears and stirred echoes in his startled brain. 


PAULA 


223 


It was like a drop of molten lead dropped upon 
him, but under Reeves’s eyes his face remained 
as iron. There was not a quiver, not a movement, 
not one faintest indication of the shock that went 
through him. He saw the other’s device, and 
defeated it absolutely. 

‘Ts that what she calls you?” he said sym- 
pathetically; and Reeves, nearly but not quite 
thrown off the track of his suspicions, mumbled 
something unintelligible. 

He half turned towards the door ; then he came 
back and drew the pistol out of his pocket, and 
held it close to Vincent’s face. “Do you see 
that?” he said grimly. 

“Yes, and it’s not the first I’ve seen,” returned 
■*ent, dryly, without iiioving. 

‘Well, if I find she’s with you at any time, 
111 put a bullet into your head, though I have to 
follow you all over the world to do it.” 

At the last word Vincent leapt to his feet, 
knocking the pistol contemptuously aside with 
his hand. His anger, which had been growing 
and accumulating throughout the whole interview 
under his quiet manner, was thoroughly alight 
now. 

“How dare you come disturbing me and 
threatening me in my own rooms?” he said, as 
he faced the other man with his eyes blazing and 
his voice vibrating with anger. “Go out of them 
this instant, or I’ll have you turned out.” 

Vincent’s anger, like that of most people who 


224 


PAULA 


are ordinarily extremely amiable and concilia- 
tory, was particularly unpleasant to face. Reeves 
shrank before him now involuntarily just as his 
clerks had done formerly in similar moments, and 
feeling suddenly he had made an ass of himself, 
accused the wrong man, and insulted his best 
friend for nothing, he mumbled some half apol- 
ogy, and hastily shuffled to the door. 

Vincent heard his steps pass across the hall and • 
the flat door shut, and paced excitedly up and 
down his own rooms for a few minutes, his muscles . 
quivering still with anger, and the pulses in his 
temples beating. He was not particularly strong 
at that time, and the highly strung, nervous tem- 
perament he possessed he tried still further by 
constant worry, hard work, study, and late hours. 
His heart beat violently as he walked backwards 
and forwards. He felt a sense of illness and 
annoyance that he could not get back his calm 
immediately. , 

What was all this about Paula? he asked him- 
self. And — ^with sudden fear — where had she ^ 

gone if not come to him? Had she — had she ? 

and he paused in his walk as the awful thought 
struck him. Had she, in a moment of despair, 
fled to death? and to death rather than him? be-i; 
cause he had repulsed her, urged her to continue ' 
to do her duty? and if it had been too hard! poor, 
little girl ! The threats to himself he never gave ; 
one passing thought to. The visit of Reeves had| 
had just the reverse of a deterrent effect. Before | 


PAULA 


225 


that he might still have hesitated, now he should 
hesitate no longer. If Paula begged him to come 
to her he would go. 

In Vincent’s whole organisation there was not a 
single strand of cowardice; but there were many 
strands of obstinacy, and the thought that another 
stood with threats between him and any object 
would simply make him doubly determined to 
gain it. He was still pacing up and down, when 
the double knock of a telegraph boy came sharply 
upon his door. It echoed through the Sunday 
stillness that reigned over the flat. Vincent stood 
still with his heart beating. From her or of 
her? he asked himself wildly, and years seemed to 
elapse as he stood listening to the measured step 
of his servant go to the door and then return. He 
took the telegram from the man in silence, and 
glanced through it. “There’s no answer,” he said 
quietly, looking up, and the man withdrew. Vin- 
cent gave a deep sigh of relief as he folded up 
the telegram and thrust it into his breast pocket. 
After the visions of death and horror that had 
been passing through his mind, these few words 
telling him she was close to him, alive, waiting 
for him, stirred a joyous revulsion of feeling. A 
rush of new love and tenderness ran through him, 
and he gave it rein for the first time through 
months of systematic repression. She was free 
now; then so was he. The current ran quick in 
his veins, the warm colour tinged his cheeks. 
“Fortunate it did not come half-an-hour earlier,” 


226 


PAULA 


he thought grimly, with a smile, as he went into 
the adjoining room. ‘‘She is so reckless, her not 
coming straight here td me was a marvellous piece 
of prudence for her.” 

He drew on his overcoat and folded the white 
silk handkerchief round his neck. His move- 
ments were quiet, unhurried. It was just his 
dinner-hour, and a casual observer would have 
thought he was going round to his club for it, 
as usual; but the eyes in the glass had a warm 
glow in them as he settled his hat on his forehead, 
and there was a smile upon his lips as he pulled 
out his gloves from a drawer and put them on. 
His heart beat hard with pleasure at the thought 
of the woman he was going to. The insult of 
Reeves’s visit, and his threat, gave an added zest to 
the position, and the image of the man who owned 
her standing between himself and Paula with his 
loaded pistol, filled him with cool amusement. 

Very rarely indeed did anybody prevent Vin- 
cent from obtaining any object he had set his 
heart upon; and now, after some experience of 
this, it amused him to watch the attempt. His 
control over himself, and the quiet tenacity of 
his desire, generally brought its fulfilment in the 
end, in the face of all obstacles. The fact that 
however strong his desire might be, his command 
over it was stronger, and the power he possessed 
of hiding it deep down beneath an unmoved ex- 
terior, were the chief sources of his success. And 
here not the least pang of conscience troubled 


PAULA 


227; 


him with reference to the other man. Reeves 
would reap the just result of his own disgraceful, 
dishonourable bargain. To Vincent the contract 
had always been repellent, abhorrent, vile beyond 
words. 

For a man to trade with a woman for herself, 
to use her natural love for her gifts and all her joy 
in them as a lever to force her to his own desires, 
to act the meanness of Jacob and Esau over again 
with a girl in the first morning of life, and deprive 
her for ever afterwards of her birthright to give 
herself where she would, seemed to him inex- 
pressibly revolting. All this time he had held 
himself in check for her: if she could accept her 
life, good; he would try to make easier for her 
the path she wished to walk. But now there was 
no consideration to hold him, and he felt he was 
robbing no one. Reeves had robbed him, and now 
he was taking back his own. 

He was quite ready, and just leaving the room, 
when a thought struck him, and he turned back 
to his dressing-table. “Since he’s so fond of 
them,” he thought, with a smile, and took a small 
revolver from the drawer — one which had been 
his constant companion in Australia. He glanced 
over it now, saw it was fully loaded, and slipped 
it into his pocket. Five minutes later he was 
stepping from the snowy pavement into a han- 
som. “Great Northern,” he said, through the 
trap. He supposed from her wire that Paula 
was Mrs. Johnson at the hotel, and he meant if 


228 


PAULA 


he were asked for his name to give Mr. Johnson, 
but, according to his general rule, he should not 
volunteer any information. He meant to walk 
into the hotel and straight on to her room, not 
stopping en route, unless he were stopped. His 
principle was, “Take everything you want for 
granted in this life,” and those around you gen- 
erally take it for granted too. At the hotel when 
he arrived there was still a large number of pas- 
sengers round the bureau and in the passages. 
He passed through them as if with a definite 
purpose to the stairs. At the head of the first 
flight a room-waiter met him and asked him what 
number he could direct him to. 

“Twenty-one,” replied Vincent promptly, and 
the man, recognising it was the number of a pri- 
vate sitting-room, bowed and passed on with a 
respectful “Straight on, sir, on the right.” 

Vincent went down the corridor, his heart beat- 
ing, his whole frame thrilled through with long- 
ing, love, and pleasure. The door of 21 stood 
just ajar. Vincent tapped slightly and then 
pushed it open. Paula was not visible. The room 
might have been occupied some weeks from its 
appearance. A carefully made-up fire blazed in 
the grate, and flung its light all over the room — 
a red light that danced over the table, ready laid 
for dinner, sparkling on the white damask and 
silver, and amongst the red and white wine- 
glasses. His own portrait faced him from the 
mantelpiece, where it stood in the centre in its 


PAUUA 


229 


frame, very much en evidence, and her own little 
clock was beside it. The couch was drawn close 
to the fire, and her velvet jacket lay tossed among 
the cushions. On this couch, which faced the 
folding doors into the next room, Vincent sat 
down, and his hand fell upon her cloak beside 
him ; the velvet felt warm to his hand, half frozen 
by the outer air. 

He watched the door, and in a few seconds it 
opened. Paula came through the door from the 
darkness behind her, and with one little, glad, 
inarticulate cry ran towards him. It thrilled 
through the man who heard it, just as their first 
kiss had thrilled him. That had been nature 
awakened; this was nature satisfied. Relief, in- 
finite confidence, and pleasure spoke in it. He 
felt the infiuence he possessed over her as he had 
never done yet, realised the absolute complete- 
ness of her love for him. There was no question- 
ing now as she met him, no hesitation, no asking 
for forgiveness. She had found herself, felt sure 
of herself at last. 

“Vincent,” she said, pressing his hand and 
drawing him down beside her, as she took her seat 
on the sofa, “I am free. I shall never go back to 
r him — never. I can’t stand it. I feel mad with 
} the happiness of being free again.” She crossed 
1 her hands behind her head, and leant back in the 
' corner of the couch. Her lips and cheeks were 
brilliant, her eyes overfiowing with light and 
I sparkling with smiles. 


230 


PAULA 


To Vincent her unquestioned freedom was not 
so obvious. To him the path before them seemed 
set with infinite difficulties for them both. But 
to Paula, when under the influence of any of her 
keen desires, all obstacles in the road to them 
seemed to dwindle into nothing. Almost as a 
somnambulist she walked straight towards them 
and amongst them, her eyes fixed on the given 
point before her, and blind to all else, and deaf 
to all warnings. It was not exactly her fault. 
It was the outcome of the innate recklessness of 
her character. She was simply incapable of giv- 
ing to anything that stood between her and her 
wishes its due importance. It seemed as if the 
magnitude of the desire itself dwarfed everything 
temporarily to her eyes. As she had heedlessly, 
almost unthinkingly, sold herself for her art, 
without fully realising the importance of the act, 
so now it seemed genuinely perfectly simple to 
her to cast aside her obligations when she had 
once actually determined that she would. Un- 
fortunately, an agreement signed mth Fate is 
generally pigeon-holed against us for life. 

‘‘Well, why are you so silent?” she asked, rais- 
ing her eyebrows. “See, dearest, IVe done noth- 
ing to involve you in the matter at all. IVe made 
up my mind to leave Reeves, that’s all; but if — 

if W^ell, I shall go down into the country, 

to live quietly by myself, quite alone. My leav- 
ing him need not affect you at all, unless you 
wish.” 


PAULA 


231 


‘'Yes, I think you will do that,” said Vincent 
suddenly turning to her; and then he added with 
an extreme gravity, “I hope you won’t attempt 
any more impossible things. Haven’t we suffered 
enough?” 

Paula’s eyes filled. “I will do exactly what 
you tell me,” she murmured submissively; and 
Vincent felt it was impossible to moralise with 
her. 

“What do you suppose Reeves will do?” he 
said, after a minute. 

“Get a divorce, I suppose,” returned Paula 
lightly; “I don’t care a hang what he does.” 

Vincent was silent. He saw that no suspicion 
of her husband following and attacking himself 
occurred to her. Instinctively he felt the slightest 
hint of this would terrify Paula and make her 
deny him possession of herself. “Let’s hope he 
will,” he said merely, enjoying her proximity 
now, and feeling the pleasure made keener by the 
sense that he might pay for these moments with 
his life. “Then in six months you will be my 
wife; will you like that?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she murmured. 

“And your work! Are you content to leave it 
all? Remember how much you wanted a name 
once!” 

“Yes, I know,” returned Paula. “I was great 
in a way, with Reeves. With you I shall be 
happy, which I have found out to be much 
better.” 


232 


PAULA 


A discreet cough and tap came outside, and 
Paula sprang up, with a smile, and crossed to the 
chair by the fire opposite him. “Yes, you can 
serve dinner,” she said, in answer to the waiter; 
and he brought in the soup. 

“Our first dinner together,” Vincent mur- 
mured, with a smile, as they drew up their chairs. 
She was so light-hearted, so untroubled, that she 
seemed to him more like his innocent bride than 
a woman whom the world would hold guilty, and 
the law declare bound to another. 

Paula w'as absolutely without a sense of guilt, 
and therefore felt no self-reproach and no fear. 
She had never regarded herself as the wife of 
Reeves, never looked upon the marriage with him 
as anything but a harsh contract, entered into for 
the sake of her art, and of which she had not 
understood the terms. To her view, that recog- 
nised only the moral and never the conventional 
aspect of things, there could be no infidelity 
where there had never been love. If she chose 
to resign her art and the contract made for it 
alone, she seemed to herself free to do so. 

When the waiter had been dismissed, Paula 
filled Vincent’s glass as well as her own. “I 
haven’t been drinking wine this last week,” he 
said, with smiling disapproval, “and I am cer- 
tainly in no need of any this evening.” 

“Oh, you must,” laughed Paula; “I wish it. I 
can’t understand any one not drinking wine, ex- 
cept for economy,” she added, lifting her own 


PAULA 


233 


glass and looking at him over it with the amber 
light of the sparkling liquid reflected in her smil- 
ing eyes. 

“The only motive that doesn’t move me,” 
answered Vincent, laughing, and watching her 
drink with pleased eyes. “If I couldn’t afford it, 
I suppose I should do it.” He kissed the sweet 
little hand that carried the empty glass back to 
the table, and took it from her and put his own 
untouched one by her plate. 

“Oh, do drink it, Vincent.” 

“I’d rather not.” 

“You make it like a temperance meeting,” 
complained Paula, and Vincent yielded, as usual 
with her, to her caprice, and drank the wine with 
a smile, knowing it would bring its customary 
pain across his eyebrows. 

“Now are you satisfied?” he said, laughing. 

“Quite,” returned Paula, looking at him with a 
passion of appreciation that startled him. This 
delightful weakness of his made his strength to 
her. The yielding up of his will, to the outside 
world so unbending, into her hands, appealed to 
her vain and imperious nature; appealed, too, to 
its generous, tender instincts. By it he subdued 
her, chained her to himself, and endeared himself 
to her, to an extent he himself never realised. 

“I am sorry I asked you,” she said, penitently 
and impulsively. “Will it hurt you?” 

“I don’t think the consequences will be very 
serious or desperate,” he answered, laughing. 


234 


PAULA 


“In any case, the fatal act is accomplished,” he 
added, jestingly. “Don’t let your dinner get 
cold; let me give you the other wing.” 

Paula still looked at him anxiously, but the 
immediate effect was only for good ; a light colour 
came into his face and suffused the pale, well- 
carved, handsome lips that were so much — too 
much — ^like a statue’s. As the dinner went on and 
they talked and laughed together, it seemed to her 
nothing had intervened between them since they 
had sat in her little room at Lisle Street on the 
first evening they had met and jested as to the 
ten commandments across their teacups. 

After dinner, when the waiter had left them, 
after setting their coffee on the table, Vincent 
drew her to him. She came over to the hearth 
and sat down on the rug before the fire at his 
feet, and leant her head back on his knees. 

“Give me your signet ring to wear, will you?” 
she said, holding up her ringless hands; “I can 
turn its crest into the palm and make it look like 
a wedding-ring.” 

“I will bring you one to-morrow,” Vincent 
answered, slipping off his ring from his little 
finger and putting it on to her hand, so that its 
carved amethyst faced the palm. They began 
to talk of their plans. Vincent leant strongly to 
their starting on the following day for Plymouth, 
and taking the first boat to Australia. Paula 
combated the idea. 

“Oh no, Vincent; you say you are a bad sailor. 


PAULA 


235 


and you will be ill and wretched all the time: it 
is such a pity to begin our life together like that. 
Let’s go overland to Marseilles, and cross into 
Egypt from there. Think what weather this is 
to start from Plymouth in.” 

Vincent was silent, gazing at the white up- 
turned throat. 

“Vincent!” 

“Yes, dear.” 

“Well, what do you think?” 

“I have said what I think, darling.” 

“But I’d much rather go via Marseilles.” 

“Then we will go that way,” he said, smiling. 

“It won’t make much difference, will it?” 

“Possibly none. I could not say. Anyway 
we will chance it.” 

The officious clock on the mantelpiece struck 
ten. They both listened to the ten strokes that 
seemed to jar on the warm stillness and soft red 
light of the room. Vincent looked at her. 

“I must go, darling,” he said, rising; “look at 
the time.” 

Paula rose too, and stood for a second, and 
then, as at their first kiss, their very first, long 
before, she found herself almost unconsciously 
drawn within his arms, in that soft, irresistible 
embrace. 

“Shall I stay?” he murmured. 


XI 


,The next morning, very early for him — between 
seven and eight — Vincent left the Great Northern 
and took a hansom back, through an icy, yellow 
fog, to his rooms. The dark, heavy atmosphere 
lay like a wet blanket round him, and seemed to 
correspond to the weight of responsibility he felt 
he had taken up since last night. He pushed the 
silk muffler higher round his throat, and fastened 
the overcoat across his breast. Even then he 
coughed a little, and his face looked grey, tired, 
and worn in the cheerless light. Not that he 
regretted a single moment in the past twelve 
hours; on the contrary, he felt a deep content 
and quiet satisfaction. Reeves was scored off, and 
his own property his again; hut there was much 
to be thought out, much to arrange, and a deep 
anxiety to shield the girl from all danger and 
from all painful consequences weighed upon him. 

When he reached his rooms, he rang to have 
his fire lighted, and while this was being done, 
he changed from his dress clothes into his dress- 
ing-gown and slippers. When he reappeared, 
the room was empty and the fire burning bril- 
liantly. Vincent drew the couch towards the 
grate and threw himself upon it with a sense of 
extreme exhaustion. In a few seconds he was 


PAULA 


237 


asleep, too tired to think things out further. 
When he next opened his eyes his breakfast stood 
waiting for him on the table, and a letter in the 
plate. Vincent roused himself, sat up, and took 
the letter. It was from Reeves — an apology for 
the previous night’s interview, a retraction of all 
suspicion, and a hope their lengthy friendship 
would not be broken. An ironical smile passed 
over the face of the man reading it. There was 
something amusing in being apologised to at that 
moment by Paula’s husband. 

He sat for a long time gazing down absently 
on the paper in his hand, thinking over his own 
course of action. Would it be more convenient 
to himself, he was thinking, to refuse to accept 
Reeves’s apologies, and make last night’s scene, 
as he well could do now, the excuse for a break 
with him.; or to maintain a nominal friendship 
with him for the present? In the first case, if he 
broke with him, he would be spared all observa- 
tion and all comment upon liis own actions, but 
at the same time he should then lose sight of 
Reeves’s movements and intentions; whereas in 
the second" case, under cover of their acquaint- 
anceship, he could make Reeves supply him with 
detailed information. In the one case he would 
see the enemy’s maps, and have to make pretence 
of displaying his own; in the other he would see 
none, and show none. He thought he preferred 
the former. It was the method where more diplo- 
macy and skill were required; but, on the whole, 


238 


PAULA 


he thought it safer, if well worked. He crossed 
to his writing-table and wrote a few rapid lines, 
asking if Reeves had heard anything of Paula, 
and offering his assistance if Reeves required it. 
He despatched this, and then sat down to his 
breakfast. He did not know now if it were the 
best thing to have done ; it would be a great nuis- 
ance to have Reeves coming in and out and hang- 
ing about just then, when he was making his 
preparations for his and Paula’s leaving: at the 
same time it would be simply invaluable to them 
to know where Reeves might be, and in what oc- 
cupation, at any given time. 

He had hardly finished his breakfast and flung 
himself upon the couch, when he heard a knock 
on the outside door; it was familiar, and he won- 
dered for a second whose it was, then his sitting- 
room door opened and Paula’s brother came in. 
Vincent started a little at his unexpected entry, 
and he only had a few seconds to decide how to 
meet the questions he had doubtless come to ask. 
Should he take him into their confidence? He 
hesitated; his life-long habit was reserve. The 
less people, even among your friends, know your 
plans, the smoother they work. But with Paula’s 
brother it was different. There was little danger 
of his betraying them through stupidity. One 
glance at his face decided Vincent. How like he 
was to her; he seemed more like her than ever this 
morning, and the same alert intelligence looked 
out of his eyes. 


PAULA 


239 


“Oh, Vincent,” he exclaimed, crossing the 
room to the couch and sitting down by it, “what 
is all this about Paula? What does it mean? 
Reeves came to me last night, and told me she’d 
gone. Of course I thought it was to you, and 
said nothing; but then he assured me he’d been 
to you, and you knew nothing about it. But 
surely you do know something of it, don’t you?” 
he said, fixing his eyes on' Vincent’s face. 

Vincent did not answer immediately. There 
was silence, and in the grey morning light be- 
tween them the two men looked at each other. 

“If you don’t,” he broke out passionately after 
a minute, “she is dead — she has done it. She 
has often threatened to — often,” and Vincent saw 
him grow white to his quivering lips. 

“No,” he said, very gently, in the tone which 
he generally used only to her; “no, she is 
alive.” 

“Then you do know! Where is she? Where 
was she last night?” 

“With me,” Vincent replied, quietly meeting 
the other’s eyes fully; then, with the faintest 
shadow of a smile, he extended his hand from the 
couch towards him. “Do you condemn us, Char- 
lie?” 

A hot, red flush went in a sudden wave over the 
other’s face, and he seized the outstretched hand 
in both his own. “No, no, no ; you know I don’t,” 
he said impulsively. “It was all a wretched, mis- 
erable mistake; she ought never to have married 


240 


PAULA 


Reeves. She has suffered dreadfully. You have 
been away; you don’t know what it has been to 
see her, to watch her as I have done, struggling 
against herself and wasting to death in the strug- 
gle. She used to come and spend the Sunday 
with me sometimes, and cry, until she fainted 
from exhaustion. It was terrible,” and the boy 
shuddered. Vincent’s eyes filled painfully as he 
listened. 

‘‘She is not really weak,” Charlie went on, in 
passionate defence. “She always made the mis- 
take of trying to force herself beyond endurance, 
to drive against the grain of her nature, to do 
things a really weak woman would never attempt. 
It must have ended in suicide at last — that was 
what I dreaded — she wanted her liberty so much. 
She had always had it from a child, and she 
couldn’t forgive Reeves for taking her from you. 
She 

At this moment there was a ring at the outer 
bell, and before either had time to alter their 
position, Reeves had entered the room. As Vin- 
cent had expected, he had come flaring round the 
instant he had received his note. He looked more 
like a huge white cat than ever this morning: his 
pale skin seemed to have an additional pallor, and 
his greenish-coloured eyes blinked nervously at 
the sunlight under their swollen lids. 

“Any news?” asked Vincent, from the sofa. 

“None,” muttered Reeves, walking over to 
them, his eyes travelling all over the room, as if 


PAULA 


241 


he almost expected to see Paula now crouching 
behind some piece of furniture. 

“What am I to do, I say?” and he looked from 
one to the other with a ludicrous helplessness. 

“Can I offer you some breakfast?” asked Vin- 
cent, sitting up. “I can have some fresh coffee 
made for you in a few minutes.” 

“No, no,” answered Reeves distractedly; “I 
couldn’t touch anything.” 

“Well, but haven’t you any clue as to where 
she would be likely to go?” said Vincent. 

“None, none,” returned Reeves; “I’m utterly, 
totally, at a loss.” 

“It seems to me,” remarked Vincent, “you had 
better wait quietly; it’s quite possible she will 
return in a few days. I am going over to Paris 
this evening; can I make any inquiries, or help 
you in any way when I’m there?” 

“Paris!” ejaculated Reeves, stopping short 
in his fiery walk. “But why should she go 
there?” 

“No reason; but fugitives sometimes do,” re- 
joined Vincent. His voice and manner were per- 
fectly calm. Charlie listened with acute attention. 

“And why are you going?” resumed Reeves 
abruptly, staring fixedly at him; “this is some- 
thing new.” 

Vincent laughed. “I told Charlie days ago I 
was going. Didn’t I?” he said, carelessly turning 
to his companion, who assented at once. “It’s 
business, as usual, with our firm’s agent. He’s 


242 


PAULA 


over there now. We might run over together, if 
you thought it any good.” 

Charlie’s breath seemed to himself to halt in his 
lungs as he heard. Vincent lay pale, unmoved, 
indifferent, on the couch; his voice was gentle, 
calm, and cold as usual. 

“No,” grumbled Reeves; “how can I go? I 
can’t get away to-night; besides, she’s not likely 
to have gone so far.” 

Vincent remained silent wdth the air of a man 
who has exhausted his stock of suggestions and 
can think of no more. Charlie played nervously 
with a tortoise-shell paper-knife he had taken 
from the table, and Reeves stamped gloomily 
about with his eyes on the carpet. 

“Well,” he said at last, “I’ll go and see Austin: 
he and Polly were always chums; he may have 
heard something of it all. Anyway, he is a clever 
fellow, and could advise me, perhaps.” With this 
speech, which was not exactly complimentary to 
his present advisers, he took up his hat and went 
to the door. 

“See you again, Charlie,” with a nod in his 
direction. “I suppose I shan’t see you again, 
Halham, till you come back. By the way, how 
long do you stay?” 

“Oh, two days, I expect; not more,” answered 
Vincent. 

“Well, good-bye,” said Reeves, and went. 

“I think you were splendid,” murmured Char- 
lie, when they heard the door bang; but a wave 


PAULA 


243 


of light scarlet blood swept across the clear-out- 
lined face on the sofa cusliion. 

“I hate telhng lies,” he said passionately, 
springing to his feet. “I hate having to delude 
and trick another, even for her sake. This is 
where a woman always leads one. Why, in 
Heaven’s name, didn’t your sister accept me when 
I could have married her, given her all I had, and 
when there was no third person’s damned inter- 
ference?” He was excited now, and his eyes 
shone on the astonished Charlie, who watched him 
in a sort of fascination. So long as Reeves had 
been in the room, Vincent had been statuesque in 
composure and indifference, and the sharp transi- 
tion was arresting. 

“Yes,” he said slowly, after a second; “I admit 
it’s all Paula’s fault.” The words touched the 
generous nature of the other to the quick. 

“What a beast I am to have spoken like that!” 
he exclaimed. “Dear little girl! No, it was not 
her fault, Charlie. It was mine, somehow, or 
other; it must have been. Well, it’s no use la- 
menting the past now. Are you coming to cheer 
me whilst I pack? I must get some things to- 
gether.” Charlie got up, and the two men went 
into Vincent’s room. Vincent gave him a com- 
fortable arm-chair, and proceeded to drag out his 
portmanteaus, answering Charlie’s questions 
about his sister as he did so. 

When at five o’clock Vincent drove up to the 
Great Northern with a couple of his portman^ 


244 


PAULA 


teaus, he looked white and haggard, and as he 
entered Paula’s sitting-room upstairs, she had, in 
the illness of her lover’s face, a first faint taste 
of all the bitterness that lies in the core of the 
fruit of evil-doing. She sprang from the chair 
by the fire where she sat waiting for him, all her 
love tremulous in her face and shining in her eyes. 
Vincent’s tone was just as tender and his smile 
just as sweet for her as he caressed her. 

“Well, darling, you must have had a dull day, 
I’m afraid,” he said gently, as she took his cold, 
half-frozen hand in her two soft palms, deliciously 
warm and rosy. His, though drawn from his fur- 
lined glove, chilled as the touch of snow itself. 

“What makes you look so ill, Vincent?” she 
asked, with tears in her voice. 

“Do I look ill?” he said, smiling. “Oh, noth- 
ing ; I am a little tired, I suppose. I had a good 
deal to do and arrange at my place to make 
things quite straight. You see, we may not want 
to come back for some time, and leaving so sud- 
denly when you are not sure about your return 
always means work.” He threw himself into the 
arm-chair, pulled up to the hearth waiting for 
him, and drew Paula on to his knees. 

“We shall come back as soon as Reeves has 
got his divorce, shan’t we?” she said softly. 

“Possibly,” he returned, languidly. Contin- 
gencies, even probable ones, never interested him. 
His mind was of the clear-cut order that faces 
facts willingly, but objects to grappling with in- 


PAULA 


245 


tangible hypotheses. Paula’s mind, the imagina- 
tive, speculative mind, on the contrary, had the 
true artistic habit of leaping over the actual into 
the theoretical, of looking at things in their 
widest, most general sense, of scanning their far- 
reaching issues — of passing over the Is into the 
Might Be. 

In tliis case Vincent knew perfectly the divorce 
Paula assumed so lightly was not even a possible 
contingency, and the mention of it brought back 
for an instant the heart sickness of the morning. 
He realised all his love was unable to free her now 
from the fetters she had so carelessly forged, and 
he felt, too, that same carelessness which had been 
with her when she so lightly slipped them on, was 
with her now when she fancied she had so lightly 
laid them aside. Her gay, reckless nature, 
trained and fed on the Greek ideals instead of the 
English Bible, recognised only two really serious 
and important things in life — art and love. To 
feel deeply for, or be deeply impressed by, any- 
thing else was impossible to her. Vincent felt 
this as he looked at her and saw her vivid, radiant 
face glowing with happiness, where another wom- 
an’s would have been pale with anxiety and 
stained with tears. 

“You are quite happy?” he said involuntarily, 
looking up at her with a laugh. All the anxiety 
he felt, all the difficulties he foresaw when away 
from her, faded utterly here, now, under the 
irresistible power of her physical presence. 


246 


PAULA 


“Perfectly,” she answered, her hand on his that 
held her waist. 

“As happy as if you had married me instead 
of Reeves?” 

“Quite. Does anything matter if we have each 
other?” It was the simple expression of her view 
of things. 

He drew the lovely head down suddenly beside 
his own. “No, nothing! Nothing!” 


XII 


Eleven days had passed, and on the evening of 
the eleventh, Paula lay on a couch half-way 
between the fire and the window of a room on the 
first floor of the “Hotel de TUnivers et de Pro- 
vence,” at Marseilles. The window overlooked 
the quay and the noble harbour, one of the great 
harbours of the world. From this sitting-room 
one could see, through the delicate spires of a 
hundred masts, the flat, white-faced houses on the 
opposite side of the quay, and the black figures 
of people and carts moving over the great rough 
flagstones. Here and there in a gap amongst 
the huge dark hulls one caught the ripple and the 
shimmer of smooth water, and over all poured 
floods of white electric light that shone on the 
intricate meshes and webs of the rigging, making 
a silvery network between mast and mast. What 
is there in this harbour so almost painfully mov- 
ing? As one watches its ceaseless, sleepless stir, 
its regulated turmoil — as one sees the vessels 
entering and departing with their freights of ard- 
ent, eager, living beings, notes ship after ship 
changing and giving place to another in the 
eternal conung and going, and looks on all the 
restless, heaving, ordered disorder, one seems to 
lay one’s hand on the great throbbing heart of 


248 


I^AULA 


humanity and hear it beat, to hold its pulse and 
feel it rise and fall. 

Paula lay looking with dreaming eyes through 
the panes. There was a faint flush under the soft 
skin, an unflnished smile trembled on the parted 
lips. Her arms were doubled above her head. 
She was waiting for Vincent to come back. He 
had gone to see about their berths in the next 
vessel starting for Australia, and she had stayed 
in on the nominal plea of feeling tired, but really 
more that she might have a few minutes of abso- 
lute solitude in which to enjoy, to realise, her own 
happiness — to take it up, as it were, in both 
hands, and look at it as a child does a new play- 
thing. ‘T am happy,” she thought, exultantly; 
“and for eleven days I have been happy. What 
a wonderful thing to have possessed and had! and 
when it dies, as it must die, it will leave the 
wonderful legacy of its memory behind.” She 
glanced back mentally through her life. The 
years stood up before her in grey blocks of time, 
like a line of diminishing cliffs, the farthest away 
being small and lost in mist. And on the face of 
them, blazing in white light, stood out eleven days. 

Happiness, what is it like? Like the gorgeous 
painted butterfly fluttering high over our head, 
with the sunlight shining on its burnished wings. 
Our hands are thrust up for it, and the hand that 
clutches it flnds it has Idlled it — sometimes. But 
here and there a delicate hand and a magic touch 
can secure it alive^ and then the butterfly lives— 


rvvCLTA 


B49 

for a little while. Paula laughed, a little gay 
laugh, and sprang up from the sofa. “Anyway, 
I have my butterfly at present, and in splendid 
condition.” She walked over to the hearth, 
stirred the fire, and looked in the glass, leaning 
her elbows on the mantelpiece. She was dressed 
in his gifts. He had insisted on her keeping the 
money she had and giving her everything she 
needed; and she delighted in the look and the 
touch of them, because they were his. As she 
leant there, her roseate face supported on the 
white dimpled hands, she saw the door open be- 
hind her and Vincent enter. The colour in her face 
deepened and the blue eyes smiled caressingly 
across the glass. Vincent came up and kissed her, 
drawing her head backwards on to his shoulder. 

“Where have you been such an age?” she mur- 
mured, under his Idss. 

“Yes, it’s years, as you say,” he returned; “the 
aeon of half-an-hour. I have secured our cabin, 
and the boat leaves on Monday — I wish it were 
to-night.” 

“Do no boats leave to-night?” 

“Yes, one; but I couldn’t get a cabin to our- 
selves on that one.” 

“I am glad you didn’t take it. I feel it would 
kill me to be separated from you a whole twelve 
hours.” 

Vincent laughed, and pressed her closer. 
“That is what I feel, too, and why I refused the 
berths this morning when they were offered me; 


250 


PAULA 


but I know it was unwise. I am so unwise where 
you are concerned, always.” 

Paula laughed and released herself, and 
walked away to the window and stood looking 
out at the brilliant quay. The Monarchy for 
Alexandria, had just sailed out of the harbour, 
leaving behind it its empt}^ berth, a glistening 
breadth of smooth black water. It had gone, and 
they were left behind. Vincent followed her to 
the window. 

“But it doesn’t matter, does it?” 

“We must hope it will not,” he returned 
gravely. “In any case, the boat’s gone now; it’s 
no use thinking of it.” 

“To-day’s Friday; we haven’t long to wait,” 
remarked Paula, gazing out at the maze of light 
beneath them; and Vincent gazed at her and 
stroked her hair gently where it flowed in crink- 
ling golden waves above her little white ear. 

Nine o’clock chimed, and the waiter entered 
the room bringing their coffee on a tray. Paula 
strolled back into the room and over to the fire to 
make and light a cigarette, humming as she did 
so, “Ha! ha! ha! Madame de Thomas! File est 
maigre comme p, elle est maigre comme 9a. File 
est maigre comme tout, est Madame de Thomas” 
— the last song they had heard at the cafe chant- 
ant last night. She sugared the coffee, and Vin- 
cent joined her from the window and took the 
easy-chair by the hearth; she threw herself into 
the other and crossed one knee, so that her foot 


PAULA 


251 


could swing to the refrain of ‘‘Madame de 
Thomas.” 

It was a cosy little room in which they sat, one 
part bedroom and five parts sitting-room, after 
the manner of French apartments. The bed 
stood almost hidden in an alcove draped with red ; 
mirrors, round and oval, on the walls gave back 
the sparkling light of the fire. A soft steady 
glow shed from the lamp swinging from the ceil- 
ing showed a new portmanteau open upon the 
floor, and all sorts of delicate chiffons and articles 
of feminine attire lying on the chairs. Paula 
herself, sitting in the midst of the gay, bright 
confusion, showed no trace of the terrible stress 
of feelings that had lifted her, as a great wave 
in hfe’s ocean, and flung her on to this stretch 
of sparkling white sand, this reef of coral, where 
there was only sunhght and clear water. It 
was only Vincent who looked a httle grave, 
and stirred his coffee with preoccupied delibera- 
tion. 

“You look quite sad,” said Paula in her caress- 
ing voice, after a minute, looking across at him. 
The light from above fell on her head and through 
the gilt waves of her hair, her eyes were luminous 
with the excitement of his presence. 

The man threw a look over her that was in 
itself almost an embrace. “Yes; because I feel 
I ought to tell you something, and haven’t the 
courage,” he murmured. * 

Paula put her cup down, and her red lips 


252 


PAULA 


parted faintly in a smile. “What an alarming 
preface! What can it be? Do tell me!” 

“Come and give me a kiss; then I will.” 

In almost one perfect, single movement Paula 
slid from her chair to her knees beside him. She 
put her arms round him and lifted her face to his. 
“You needn’t bribe me to do that,” she mur- 
mured. “Now tell me, what is it?” 

“Supposing it makes you very unhappy?” 

Paula laughed. “Nothing can harm me very 
much now. I am out of reach of the gods. 

Vixir 

“They have still the future.” 

- “And I the present. I don’t care for anything 
the future may bring, unless it’s our separation.” 

“This might even mean separation — ^it did 
once before,” said Vincent, bitterly. “I can’t 
bear telling you, only I feel I ought. I went to 
the Poste Restante to-day for letters, and found 
one there from Reeves. Somehow or other he 
has learnt that we are here, and he threatens that 
he will remove your play instantly from the 
boards if you don’t return.” 

Paula lifted her head from his shoulder and 
looked at him. He had grown pale with the effort 
it had cost him to tell her. “Is that all?” she 
asked. 

“Yes. Isn’t it enough?” 

Paula laughed joyously. “Let him,” she said 
merely. “Let him put the whole thing on the fire, 
if it amuses him. It is his and the public’s loss.” 


PAULA 


253 


“But this is the same play,” said Vincent, 
slowly, “that some months back you sacrificed 
both of us for deliberately.” 

“Yes, because I was a child; I hadn’t learnt 
life’s alphabet. A child will give away his in- 
heritance for a box of bonbons. I gave away 
mine for the bonbons of fame. Afterwards the 
child sees what a fool he’s been, as I do now.” 

Vincent gazed at her in silence. He hardly 
understood her and her rapid, violent changes of 
feeling. And this very fact lent her an additional 
attraction for him. That which we thoroughly 
understand we soon tire of. What a charm lies 
in a new tongue, and once learnt how little we 
read in it! 

“A woman’s best inheritance is herself,” went 
on Paula, in her light, derisive tones. “If she 
invests that, it pays her back in dividends of 
pleasure. If she invests her talents, they pay her 
back in work.” 

“And you don’t care?” he said, looking into 
the brilliant, mocking face. 

“I don’t care — now.” 

“Then we may burn this, it needs no further 
consideration,” returned Vincent; and he drew 
Reeves’s letter from his pocket, and holding aside 
her hand that tried to intercept it, flung it on the 
fire. She watched it curl in the light wood flame. 

“Why didn’t you let me see it? I wanted to,” 
she said petulantly. 

“Why, if you say you don’t care?” he said. 


254 


PAULA 


laughing, and raising his eyebrows. There was 
a flush of triumph on his face. The half of all 
passion is vanity, either excited or gratified, and 
in this complete abandonment of gifts and fa- 
vours really divine for the human pleasure he 
could offer, was an exquisite flattery. 

“That idiotic letter has depressed you all day!’’ 
she said, after a minute; “come out and let’s go 
to the ‘Basserie des Chouxfleurs’ and hear Jean 
Jaques sing Les Tourterelles/' 

Vincent drew out his watch. “It’s late now, 
but we will go if you like.” 

“Yes — I should like. Where did I put my 
dress ? I say 1 what a state of confusion my things 
are in!” 

She got up and found her dress and jacket, 
and was equipped in them in five minutes. As 
she put on her hat in front of the glass, Vincent 
came up. 

“Do I really outweigh everything with you?” 
he asked in her ear. 

“Why don’t you study your looking-glass 
more, if you think it so funny?” she said mis- 
chievously, engaged in pinning on her hat. 

Vincent laughed. “How we shall have to pay 
for all this happiness!” he murmured, half un- 
consciously, looking at the laughing face in the 
glass. 

“Nonsense,” returned Paula. “The only 
thing you have to pay for in this world is doing 
your duty. Virtue is its own punishment!” 


XIII 


At the same hour the following evening, Paula 
sat in her room nursing her happiness, as she 
had done the preceding one. The room was in 
an even greater confusion: she had just gone to 
the bottom of her trunk and turned everything 
on to the floor to pack it another way; then her 
mood changing, she had flung herself into a chair 
to have a ‘‘think,” and she hummed absently as 
she sat, “Ha! ha! ha! Madame de Thomas.” 

The door opened. She looked up, expecting 
Vincent. It was the waiter, however, who ad- 
vanced smiling. “A letter for Madame,” he 
murmured. She took it from the tray, and he 
withdrew. Paula tore it open contemptuously. 
She recognised the handwriting, and the mere 
sight was hateful to her. 

“25 Quai de Robinet, 
Marseilles. 

“My dear Paula, — ^With some little diffi- 
culty I have traced you and followed you, and 
I am now staying, as you see, next door to 
you. My window overlooks your hotel en- 
trance. 

“I shall be glad if you will rejoin me here 
within two hours of receiving this note, so that 


256 


PAULA 


we can return together by the midnight train to 
Paris. 

“Should you not see fit to do this, I intend 
shooting Halham at sight. I may, or may not, 
be able to do so at once, but as I shall make hunt- 
ing him down my sole occupation henceforward, 
it is unlikely he will escape me long. 

“I am quite indifferent as to what penalty I 
have to pay myself. I am determined to have 
one of two things — either my wife back or Hal- 
ham’s life. Personally, I should much prefer 
the former, but I leave the choice entirely in your 
hands. 

“Your affectionate husband, 

“Dick Reeves.’’ 

There was a little flutter of paper as the letter 
fell to the ground. Paula rose to her feet, and 
her eyes looked about the room as the eyes of a 
wild beast when first caught in the trap. It was 
terrible, awful, never to be forgotten if once seen, 
the look in the girl’s face of hatred coupled to 
despair. The full realisation came home to her 
at once of all they meant, those few words traced 
on the silent paper. They were Vincent’s death- 
warrant awaiting her signature. Then for the 
first time she felt how she loved this man — ^more 
than life or eternity, more than her own body 
and soul, more than the world or heaven, was this 
other slight perishable frame animated with its 
day of human life. “Vincent! Vincent!” she 


PAULA 


257 


said aloud. It was the cry of a dying human 
soul. 

She saw there was but one way before her — 
to go back. There was no haze in her brain, no 
dazed and merciful obscurity. All in her brain 
stood out sharp, distinct, and clear. She made a 
step forward, then stopped, as if paralysed. 
“My God! my God! why are you so fearfully 
cruel? It was a crime to marry him, I know, 
but I was blinded. Who sent that blindness 
upon me? Then I suffered for ten months — how 
I suffered! and now this agony. All this punish- 
ment for all my life long for one error, one folly. 
Is it just? Is it just?’’ 

A mocking voice repeated in her ears, “Have 
you forgotten, ‘the way of trangressors’ ?” But 
the voice died again in waves of memory from 
her childhood’s training. She was not a Chris- 
tian with the humble Christian’s ideas of a mer- 
ciful Father, with merciful chastisements and 
a merciful recall to the fold. It seemed to her 
a strange, inexplicable fate that had blinded her 
in her girlhood and thrown her into marriage 
with Reeves, that same inexorable fate that had 
hounded her on to rebellion, and now again that 
fate that pursued her in its fury to hurl her back 
into the abyss. She was the helpless shade drift- 
ing before the whirlwind. 

She paced up and down the room as a Roman 
slave might pace whilst waiting for the torture. 
There was nothing to be done and no escape, and 


258 


PAUrA 


she knew it. She walked with her teeth sunk in 
her lip till the blood from it ran in a tiny thread 
to her chin, and she did not notice it; her nails 
were sunk into the flesh of her palms in her 
clenched hands. Only one thing possessed her 
mind now. The man she loved should not suffer. 
As she came up to the window, the brilhance of 
the harbour with its swaying load of vessels and 
their silvery rigging caught the mechanical vision, 
and she looked out. “Had we gone yesterday 
night,” she thought, with a bitter smile, “we might 
have escaped.” Well, it was not to be. 

The door opened as she stood there, and she 
turned and saw Vincent enter. Was it only her 
malignant fate that dazzled and deluded her 
vision? Or did he really look better, more 
pleasing, more attractive than usual that night? 
His face was slightly flushed with the cold air 
outside, his eyes animated with the thought that 
he was coming back to her; a smile broke over his 
lips as she came to him. The next moment her 
arms were twisted tightly round his throat; her 
warm lips on his seemed seeking to draw out his 
life. 

“Why, what is it, darling?” he asked, con- 
cernedly. 

“Oh, Vincent! I must give you up — go back.” 

“Go back!” he repeated, almost sharply, 
“What are you talking about?” 

“He will kill you otherwise.” 

Vincent gave a relieved laugh. “Oh, is that 


PAULA 


259 


all?” he said, merely taking off his hat and laying 
it down. Then drawing her over to the fire, he 
stood opposite her on the rug and put his arms 
round her again. ‘‘Well, Sweetness, that amiable 
intention of his is not new to me.” 

“Read it,” she said, with dry lips and throat; 
and she gave him the letter. 

Vincent took the sheet from her ice-cold hand 
and read it, keeping her trembling frame against 
his side. When he came to the end he flung the 
letter on the table and laughed, and bent over her 
and kissed her bleeding lips. 

“I admit it’s very neatly put: succinct and to 
the point — worthy of one of your own plays, 
darling. But as to shooting — two can shoot, if it 
comes to that. Since we left I have never been 
without this as my hospes comesque corporis'" 
and he drew out his own little revolver, and the 
steel glistened in the firelight. 

Paula clung to him in silence. 

“He put a charming postscript to his last letter 
about the play, but I didn’t want you to be 
bothered. I didn’t think he would write again 
and fuss you about it.” He spoke as lightly as 
if a troublesome tradesman had sent in his bill. 
Nor was it affectation. Danger is an exhilaration 
to some temperaments. It was to him. His eyes 
sparkled as he glanced over his own steel toy. 

“But don’t you understand . . . that ... I 
. . . can’t . . . stay?” said Paula. Her lips and 
throat were so dry she could hard^^ articulate. 


260 


PAULA 


She trembled so violently that the bracelets on 
her arm clinked together. 

Vincent laid down the revolver on the table and 
looked at her with sudden gravity. 

“What do you mean?” he said briefly. “I 
want you to understand once for all that there’s 
nothing else for you to do.” 

Paula looked back at him in silence. The 
agony that held her brain seemed almost to de- 
prive her of her reasoning powers and of her 
speech. It was more instinct that worked in her 
than reason — the defensive instinct acting for 
him. If a mother, Paula would have fought 
to the death for her young, and the wealth of 
unused maternal instinct within Nature used 
now for her lover. Paula stood with her arms 
hanging at her sides motionless for a second, then 
her strained eyes wandered from his face to the 
clock. She started violently. 

“Look at the time ! He said two hours !” Her 
voice was thin with fear, her lips white except 
where the blood had stained them. She turned 
mechanically from him to the table, seized the 
linen and the dainty pairs of new shoes laid upon 
it, and dropped them into the open trunk. An 
unconscious instinct for a commonplace matter 
worked while her mind was reeling in a blind 
horror of pain. She had been going to Egypt, 
and she was packing for that : now she was going 
somewhere else, but she must pack for that too. 
The movement convinced Vincent of her inten- 


PAULA 


261 


tions which he would not believe from her words. 
She meant, then, to return, to go back to the other 
man, and suddenly, through all the nineteenth- 
century culture, through his self-command, and 
the delicate refinement of habitual thought and 
feeling, rushed up the simple, savage, primal im- 
pulse — the blind jealousy of male against male. 

He seized her arm and tore her backwards from 
the trunk. She looked up and saw his face close 
above hers, and as she had never seen it yet. It 
was transfigured by anger, and that anger against 
her! but she had no fear in her; if he would only 
kill her she would be glad ! The grip on her arm 
forced the tears into her eyes; through them she 
looked at him. The usually pale skin burned with 
a dull crimson, his eyes were blazing, the mouth 
and chin were set in an iron cruelty. 

“What folly is this, Paula? Do you suppose 
you can go backwards and forwards, and trifie 
with me like this? You chose to come; now 
I choose you to stay, and there’s an end of 
it.” 

Paula gazed at him with her filling eyes, and, 
as in her own case far back, his face took up arms 
against his words — it appealed so vividly to 
Paula. At this crisis of her life, and of her own 
happiness, the impersonal instinct leapt up in her 
and conquered. Marred as it was with rage, 
every line in the countenance was noble and per- 
fectly drawn. It was handsome; to the woman 
who loved him, it was beautiful; to the artist it^ 


262 


PAULA 


was sacred. A plainer man Paula would have 
loved, and perhaps, now, stayed with. 

‘‘He might not even kill you,” she said, and her 
voice was almost calm. She was thinking aloud 
rather than speaking. “He might maim you, dis- 
figure you, blind you. How can I stay?” 

He looked down at the raised face with its 
wide, tear-filled eyes. In spite of all she had 
passed through Paula’s face still retained a won- 
derfully innocent child-like look that came back 
to it and lingered on it at moments now and then. 
The look was there now, and it melted Vincent’s 
passion of anger. He drew her up close into his 
arms and felt the heart beating in a wild tumult 
on his own. 

“Even if he did all these imaginary things,” 
he murmured in his old tone and with his old 
smile, “none of them would be so bad as giving 
you up. And why think of what may never be 
the case at all? I never do. You are always 
fighting possible battles, solving hypothetical 
problems. You shouldn’t do it. Wait till the 
things come. It’s quite improbable that we shall 
meet at all; if we do, I should imagine I’m the 
straighter shot of the two.” 

“No! I can’t stay, I can’t,” replied Paula, her 
voice stifled with weeping; “don’t ask me — oh, 
don’t,” and she freed herself from his clasp and 
went on gathering her things together mechanic- 
ally, and throwing them into her trunk with the 
tears streaming down her blanched cheeks. 


PAULA 


263 


Vincent sat down in the centre of the dis- 
ordered room and followed her with his eyes. 
She went through every detail of her packing, 
sobbing all the wliile, and her hands quivering 
violently as she folded the things together. She 
seemed half unconscious of all she did; even her 
crying seemed unconscious; the tears streamed 
down and she never once paused to dry them. At 
last the trunk was full, and she knelt and locked 
it; then standing up, she surveyed the room: all 
was finished ; she slipped the keys into her pocket 
and came up to him to say good-bye. 

She put one arm round his shoulders, but Vin- 
cent did not stir. “Say good-bye to me, Vincent, 
won’t you?” she said, in her sobbing voice; “you 
may never see me again.” 

“I have told you, you are to stay: you are dis- 
obeying me.” 

“But I can’t stay to murder you. I am only 
going for you.” 

“I must know what I wish most,' and I tell you 
to stay.” 

“I can’t.” 

“Very good; then you have done with me.” 

The coldness and hardness of the words and 
tones — the result of his own intense feeling — 
seemed to crush the trembling girl as a physical 
blow. She threw herself passionately on her 
knees before him and clasped liis hand. 

“Oh, Vincent, say you forgive me, and let me 
go in peace.” 


264 . 


PAULA 


‘'I can’t do that,” returned Vincent, with un- 
changed face and voice. “You have had your 
own way all along against my wishes and judg- 
ment, and in consequence have spoilt both our 
lives. I warned you not to marry Reeves, and 
you would. I urged you then not to leave him, 
and you would. Now I tell you to stay, and you 
insist upon going: well, go then, and, as I say, 
have done with me, that’s all.” 

His face was pale with the stress of suppressed 
passions. Paula, kneeling there, wrung her 
hands despairingly. 

“But he will follow us — you — wherever we 
go. 

“You knew that when you left him.” 

“Not that he might kill you. No, no, no; I 
swear I never dreamed of it.” 

“I have told you I would rather risk it ten 
thousand times than have the pain of losing you, 
and the humiliation of giving you up to Reeves.” 

Paula looked at him through her blinding 
tears. For a moment she wavered, it was so easy, 
so delightful to stay: the temptation was very 
great, life with him until found — if found — by 
Reeves, and then simple death by her own hand 
if he were taken from her ; but to go back, to enter 
again that dark, narrow path of degradation that 
she must tread downwards to the end: it was 
almost beyond her strength, but then — she looked 
hard at the face she loved, and it swam suddenly 
before her in a mist of blood. 


PAULA 


265 


“Let me go,” she said in a faint, breathless 
voice, with dilated eyes. 

“I have said, go.” 

“But with your consent?” 

“No.” 

“Say you forgive me; condemn me, think me 
in the wrong, but forgive me.” 

“No.” 

“Then I must go unforgiven,” she said, sud- 
denly starting to her feet. “Oh, Vincent, nobody 
can ever love you in this world as I have done, 
and do, and always shall. I would give up my 
life this minute for yours if it would benefit you, 
but that wouldn’t. Going back to him does pro- 
tect you, and I must do it.” 

Vincent did not seek to restrain her by force; 
he looked up, and the last he saw of her was her 
pale face and passionate eyes gazing back at him 
from the darkness beyond the threshold of the 
door. Then she was gone. Vincent sat on mo- 
tionless. By-and-by some men belonging to the 
hotel came up to take her portmanteau and hand- 
bag. He took no notice. The men took the 
things out in silence and closed the door. 

Mechanically, like a sleep-walker, she had gone 
straight from him to her husband’s room. Reeves 
looked up and saw her enter: her face was livid 
and lined and seamed, the eyes looked out at him 
with an undying hatred and reproach. His own, 
flinching yet compelled to remain fixed on hers, 
grew wide with a nervous terror. She staggered^ 


266 


PAULA 


forward a few steps almost as one drunk, and he 
shrank back in his chair before her. 

‘‘You have come back?’’ he muttered vaguely, 
mechanically, with his mouth hanging open. 

“For his sake,” returned Paula. She had no 
voice, but the dry lips moved and he saw them 
form those words. She swayed for a second, then 
dropped speechless where she stood. Reeves 
started up and bent over the little huddled, 
broken heap on the hearth, nerveless, hmp, almost 
lifeless, with little beauty in it now, ,and on the 
ashen lips the stamp of an eternal hate. 

He had got his wife back. Was this his wife? ' 
Who can constrain the human soul? 


XIV 


The journey back to Paris was terrible. Paula 
was perfectly silent and passive, like a re- 
captured fugitive from an asylum, whose frenzy 
has spent itself. She moved and acted as was 
required mechanically, but with such a will-less 
indifference that Reeves looked at her from time 
to time with a paralysing fear gripping his heart. 
Suppose this brain, so strangely excitable at all 
times, should lose its balance — the perfect, deli- 
cate balance — and the powers it had been divinely 
gifted with? He was oppressed, and before 
leaving the semi-apartment, semi-hotel, he made 
his way to the bar and drank largely to dull his 
thoughts a little. Only once did Paula give evi- 
dence that she was still a rational, sentient being, 
and that was before they descended the stairs, 
when Reeves slipped his revolver into his hand- 
bag. Her eyes flashed as they followed it in si- 
lence. When they came down he was a little 
behind her, and she stood on the pavement looking 
up to the window above her in the next-door 
hotel. It was still lighted. The night was icy, 
with a north wind sweeping down the snow-laden 
streets. Her velvet jacket lay back unfastened 
from her throat and chest. She felt the cold 
pierce through and through her. Where was he? 


268 


PAULA 


Was he still sitting there motionless? She 
thought so, and the wall and window and blind 
became transparent for her. 

“Come! get into the carriage, you’ll catch cold,” 
said Reeves’s voice behind her. She walked for- 
ward quietly and took her seat. The train left 
Marseilles punctually at midnight. In the first- 
class carriage besides themselves were two other 
passengers, Frenchmen. Reeves took one corner, 
and his vnfe lay, a crushed, seemingly inanimate 
figure, in the opposite one. Reeves put his rail- 
way rug over her and lifted her feet on to the 
foot- warmer. She took no notice, her face was 
whiter than the snow lying on the window ledges, 
and her eyes were closed. Reeves took the large 
velvet hat next from her head and put it up on the 
rack. The Frenchman opposite looked round the 
Gil Bias he Was reading, and fixed his eyes on the 
blonde chevelure thus revealed with undisguised 
admiration. The Frenchman beside her looked 
sympathetic and observed that Madame appeared 
souffrante. At the one break that occurs, when 
the train stops for twenty minutes, their carriage 
emptied itself, and Reeves asked Paula if he could 
get her anything, or if she would come to the 
refreshment room. She simply shook her head, 
and he got out, leaving her alone, and the carriage 
door open. 

In the next carriage, also on their way to Eng- 
land, travelled a British paterfamilias and his two 
daughters. They descended also and passed 


PAULA 


269 


Paula’s carriage on their way to the refreshment 
room. He happened to glance in and saw her 
face and figure and light head under the lamp- 
light. “By Jove,” he said to his two girls, “we 
have a celebrity travelling with us. That’s Paula 
Heywood in the next carriage, the great dancer; 
I recognised her directly. That’s her husband, 
that big man on in front, in the fur coat — see 
him?” Both girls were deeply interested. In the 
refreshment room he regretted his remark, for 
they could hardly let him finish his coffee, so 
eager were they to see what Paula “was like off 
the stage.” They hurried him breathlessly up to 
the platform again that they might have a 
glimpse at her before the train started. 

“There’s a person I envy,” said the younger 
girl. “Fancy having all that ! Youth and beauty 
and fame, and being able to do all those things! 
Write, and act, and dance! and lots of money, 
and a husband who adores you! She must be 
perfectly happy. Why should everything be 
I given to one person?” she added vehemently. 

^ “Unto him that hath, etc.,” answered her father 
j as they approached the open door. “Now, my 
I chick, don’t stare too much.” 

I The three comfortable English figures drew 
[ close to the carriage, the two girls’ hearts beating 
with curiosity and interest. “Is she in this one?” 
the elder girl whispered audibly, and her father 
nodded. They looked round the door. Paula, 
who had caught the whisper, had started ug 


270 


PAULA 


nervously and flung her rugs aside. She sat up, 
yet half crouching as a sick lion does when sud- 
denly roused. Her face was white, her lips blue 
and swollen from the wounds her teeth had made. 
Her eyes blazed out with a restless; nervous glit- 
ter upon the three rosy, kindly British faces look- 
ing in. Out of the pupils looked such a horrible, 
hopeless agony of unreasoning despair that the 
kind-hearted father drew on his girls hastily. 

“By Jove! it’s a cold night,” he said, shivering; 
“get in, dears, get in,” and he helped them into 
their own carriage. The girls said nothing. 

voiture, en voiture"" came along down the 
platform; ""montez, messieurs, montez, s"il vous 
plait/^ 

Reeves came tearing down the train, his long 
fur coat flying out, showing its inside pockets. 
His face was flushed with the many brandies he 
had been consuming. He had just time to scram- 
ble up the high steps of the carriage with the aid 
of the porter. The door was banged to. The 
train slid forward into the darkness. On the 
trio in the next carriage was a great silence. At 
last the youngest said, “She didn’t look very 
happy.” 

“She ought to be then, if she is not,” answered 
the other daughter, with asperity. She was a 
tall, lean girl, pleasant, plain, and good-tempered, 
except when a rush of rebellion came over her 
against the fate that had spared her the agony of 
its gifts. 


PAULA 271 

“Those people seldom are,” returned their 
father, oracularly. 

The lean girl looked out into the darkness, in- 
scrutable as the mystery of life itself. “All the 
same, she must have had her moments,” she said 
with bitter envy. She was ashamed to add her 
inner thought that followed, “I have never had 
one.” 

“Oh, yes,” answered the Briton grimly, “I 
don’t doubt it, and she’s paying for some of them 
now, if I’m not mistaken.” 

His daughter said nothing. She stared out 
into the darkness, thinking of the other woman on 
the other side of the thin wooden partition. She 
felt dimly such pain as had looked out of that face 
must have been the child of some exquisite pleas- 
ure her mind could hardly conceive. And the 
vagueness, the mystery that hung like a tantalis- 
ing veil round both the pleasure and pain, fascina- 
ted her. It was not all commiseration that stirred 
in her, her pity was strangely like envy. She 
looked out with attentive eyes. Every time the 
train passed into a tunnel or through a cutting, 
the light from the next carriage flared upon the 
opposite brickwork, and the outlines of the four 
figures within, clearly silhouetted in sharp 
shadow, flitted along the wall. 

On the other side of the partition Reeves sat 
back in his corner, his mind clouded and soothed 
by the station brandy, and after a time sank into 
a semi-doze. Paula, opposite him, sat white and 


27 ^ 


PAULA 


rigid, looking away from the broad face with its 
drunken flush into the flying darkness at her side. 
Death was there, almost certain death; if she 
turned the handle and sprang forward, death and 
oblivion awaited her, but she looked out calmly. 
It neither tempted nor invited her. It is not 
those who suffer most that recruit the suicidal 
ranks. The capacity to feel intense pain means 
also the capacity to feel intense joy, and in na- 
tures like Paula’s, in their moments of cruellest, 
inexpressible agony, the memory or the anticipa- 
tion of pleasure welds round them a chain to life 
that even their pain cannot break. It is rather 
those of lower strung temperaments, not remem- 
bering that life has ever offered them much worth 
having, and not believing that it ever will, who 
go from it so easily when a deeper tint of grey 
suffering comes over it. 

On flew the train through the snowy night. 
All the three men fell asleep by degrees, only 
the girl sat with wide eyes the whole night long 
and saw the blackness beyond the windows change 
and lighten in the chill blue dawn. In the wild 
fury of rebellion against her fate, there remained 
one clear thought in her brain — ‘Tt is my duty.” 
The duty of convention that would have com- 
pelled her to remain with a husband she had 
grown to hate simply because he was her husband, 
Paula did not understand, but the moral obliga- 
tion to save, at any cost to herself, the man she 
lo.ved, appealed to her forcibly, irresistibly. As 


PAULA 


273 


she would have flung herself upon the rack and 
kissed it, had it been to save him suffering, so 
now she set her face towards the old life she 
loathed, and would endure it to the end for his 
sake. 

All through the journey she was excessively 
silent, and this silence oppressed and awed 
Reeves. He longed at last for her to cry, to com- 
plain, to argue, to defend herself, but she did 
none of these. Hour after hour of their travelling 
passed, and she remained quite speechless. Then 
he began to understand how much he missed the 
brilliant, versatile talk, the clear laughter that he 
had always heard about him when with her; if 
not with himself, with friends, acquaintances, 
strangers — any chance companions. He felt sud- 
denly like a child who has re-captured a pet bird 
and thrust it back into its cage with delight, and 
then waits and waits in vain for his songster to 
sing again. “Would she always be like this?” 
he asked himself nervously and vaguely. Her 
movements he could control. Speech and laugh- 
ter were things of the spirit. These would elude 
him as her spirit that he grasped after had al- 
ways done. 

He was profoundly thankful when the journey 
was over, and they took up life again, side by 
side, apparently as before. For the first three 
weeks Paula lay upstairs ill. Reeves had a hired 
nurse for her, and this woman resolutely kept 
him out of the room. Charlie came to see her 


274 


PAULA 


constantly, and it was only in his arms that 
Paula’s self-command broke down in agonies of 
passionate weeping. This sweet, constant af- 
fection that had always existed between the two 
was perhaps the best and purest element in the 
girl’s disordered life, and now it stepped into 
the jagged gap and helped to soothe the wounds 
passion had made. ‘Tf he would have forgiven 
me! if he would have understood why I left him!” 
she repeated constantly, with tears, and looking 
up at him with blinded eyes from the pillows she 
was too weak to lift her head from. 

At last, however, she was well, nominally, 
again, and the nurse, who had grown to love her 
through watching her long days and nights of 
suffering, left, and Paula, dressed in black, like 
the widow she seemed to herself to be, and silent 
as one who had lost her speech, came downstairs 
and resumed all her former duties. She was very 
quiet, with the quietude of a dying person, and 
when not forced into any occupation would sit 
silent and motionless in an arm-chair, each hand 
leaning on an arm and her eyes closed, for hour 
after hour. 

And Reeves would glance at her from time to 
time with complete satisfaction. She was there. 
That was the main consideration. That her face 
was deadly white, and that her bones once so 
softly invisible stood out sharply, that all beauty 
and youth were decaying before him, troubled 
him as little as that her intellect seemed already 


PAULA 


275 


dead. Her hand had lost its cunning; at any 
rate, she never lifted it to a pen now. He was 
grimly satisfied. Well or ill, happy or unhappy, 
mattered httle with reference to the woman he 
loved. The decline of beauty, the waste of power 
moved him not at all. There were times when 
she looked nearest dying, that he almost wished 
she were dead. It would be a satisfaction to wrap 
her up in her shroud, put her into her coffin, and 
fasten the lid down securely. Then he could be 
at peace at last. He could know certainly that 
she could never escape him, be sure that those 
lips would never grow warm under another’s kiss, 
nor that form respond to life, and joy, and love. 

Slowly, very slowly, the days crept on one after 
the other, and Paula thought hourly she would 
not have the strength to live from the one to the 
next, but beyond the flesh wasting from her 
bones, there was little outward change in her 
health. She attended the theatre regularly, 
worked hard at her practice, and transacted h^r 
business matters. “Money is power,” she 
thought; “I may want it. Who knows?” And 
now she had more money in her own right than 
she could make use of. 

Everything she did was mechanical, forced, and 
laboured, and beneath a quiet, unmoved exterior 
she carried a heart that was beating itself out in 
a blind fury of rebellion. Reeves she never ad- 
dressed nor looked at except when it was abso- 
lutely necessary, and to any overtures of affection 


270 


PAULA 


he made from time to time she had one invariable 
answer, ‘'I simply loathe and abhor you, and 
shall to the hour of my death!” and Reeves shrank 
before the concentrated hatred of her words and 
eyes. He ceased to try to alter the position, and 
wrapped himself up in his idea of revenge, and 
of spite against Vincent, making this console him 
for the silent meals and dreary days which they 
dragged out in each other’s company. 

For Paula, life now was of an infinitely inten- 
sified bitterness; formerly, in all her blank exist- 
ence, she had still felt the blue sky above her of 
Vincent’s protecting sympathy and love; now 
that, too, frowned upon her. All the warm light 
had been quenched out. To her mental vision 
there was one same eternal blackness ever3rwhere, 
stamped over with letters of fire: wherever she 
looked she saw nothing, heard nothing, but his 
words, ‘‘You have done with me.” 

She felt she had lost him. That he had utterly 
passed out of her life, and would never seek to 
re-enter it; and passed out of it in anger, anger 
against her, drawn down by her own act. “But I 
couldn’t, I couldn’t do otherwise,” she would re- 
peat passionately to herself, as she lay through 
the long, silent nights. “Surely he must under- 
stand in his heart!” and her eyes, blinded by burn- 
ing tears, would strain through the darkness, 
trjdng to paint upon it his face, and hold the 
vision there, till the brain seemed to rock with 
the strain. 


PAULA 


277 


So the long nights passed in excited agonj^ 
and the long days in forced works. But nature 
sometimes weaves a certain consolation out of 
the worst of human lives, and from the extreme 
sensitiveness of Paula’s brain, that very sensitive- 
ness which was an instrument of torture, to make 
all suffering for her yet infinitely more acute — 
from this, nature worked for her a consolation. 
She began to dream: one night towards the 
morning, wearied out by silent, violent crying, she 
fell into an excited sleep, and suddenly the black 
waves of oblivion rolled apart, and through the 
gulf rushed up the past, which to her meant 
eleven happy days. Thenceforward she lived in 
the night only. 

One night Reeves, restless and unable to sleep, 
got up to try a quiet smoke by the fire. His 
wife’s breathing was gentle and regular, and 
moved by a sudden impulse, he struck a vesta 
and lighted the candle, and came softly to the side 
of the bed to look into her face. Paula was lying 
on her back, one lovely arm — grown thin now, but 
lovely still — was tossed above her head, and lay 
deep in the pillow amongst the warm loosened 
curling hair, and her face was cushioned in the 
whiteness of her arm. Reeves drew back a little, 
awestruck at the radiance of the sleeping face: 
the lips were parted slightly and curved in a soft 
smile of pleasure, the smooth arches of the brows 
had a transcendent calm, the whole face so pale, 
so tired, so haggard day by day, was transfigured 


278 


PAULA 


by the light of an infinite happiness as it lay there 
smiling in rosy sleep. Reeves drew farther back, 
and the candle shook in his trembhng hand. This 
was not his wife, not the woman he knew; never 
in all the days and weeks and months did she look 
like the one who was sleeping there. The trans- 
formation was complete, the sweetness and the 
joy lay like hght upon the features. Where was 
she now? thought Reeves, looldng down upon her 
with fascinated eyes, and in the bitterness of his 
soul he ground out his own answer, “With Hal- 
ham;” and whose wife was she? Reeves’s teeth 
chattered, and he crept back from the bed to- 
wards the fire and crouched over it like one 
stricken with sudden illness. 

Did he possess her most who had fettered the 
reluctant and helpless body, or the man who held 
the brilliant, volatile soul, to whom alone she had 
bent her unbreakable will, and to whom her freed 
and happy spirit fiew so joyously on the wings 
of sleep? Reeves sat by the dying fire in the 
silent room, crushed, humiliated into the dust by 
that lovely smile on the sleeping lips, feeling 
that unspeakable powerlessness, that sense of 
infinite smallness, which all men feel brought face 
to face with the majesty of the individual soul, 
the freedom of the individual will, that they have 
attempted to coerce. The soul, the soul, the un- 
conquerable, unchainable soul, that is for ever 
free, untouchable, unattainable, that can mock the 
lover and the torturer though the body lie help- 


PAULA 


279 


less in their grasp. This is man’s one single pos- 
session that none can rob him of, nor touch, nor 
defile. None can limit its movements, nor con- 
trol, nor restrain. There is no earthly power that 
can say to it. Thou shalt, and thou shalt not. 
Free it awakes in the body, free it dwells there, 
free it dissolves in the thin air from dying lips. 

All this, and an anguished humihation, pressed 
hard upon Reeves now, as it presses on each one 
who finds his fetters aimed at the soul falling 
mere chains on the body, and sees that the elusive 
mocking spirit must escape him to the end. 
Stung, maddened by his thoughts. Reeves, follow- 
ing the old, useless impulse, sprang up and 
walked over to the bed. “Wake up,” he said 
roughly, and seized the warm white arm. The 
sweet eyes opened, and the unclosing lids showed, 
in the blue depths beneath, the most heavenly of 
dawning smiles ; suffused still with sleep, they saw 
nothing yet but the man from whom she had 
come. Then, as they opened wider, conscious- 
ness rushed over her face like a grey sea, blotting 
out all colour, life, and joy, in one heavy blank. 

Reeves watched it all and set his teeth. 

“Get up and make me a cup of tea. I feel ill.” 

Paula sat up and looked at him. His tower- 
ing form, muffled in a wadded dressing-gown, his 
thick throat and broad face above, did not give 
an exact idea of feebleness, nor seem to demand 
acute sympathy. However, Paula made no re- 
mark; she slipped put of bed and thrust two 


280 


PAULA 


small, smooth feet into their velvet slippers, 
pulled on her own blue flannel dressing-gown, 
and walked over to the side-table, where a little 
spirit-lamp and kettle stood on an iron tray. The 
lamp needed re-trimming and re-filling, and this, 
with some little trouble, Paula accomplished, and 
then lighted the wick. As she watched the flame 
burn, she took a chair by the table and leant both 
arms upon it. 

Reeves had gone back to the fire, and sat there 
in sullen silence. Paula was very tired, and sat 
silent too, yawning, and watching the flame with 
sleepy, half -open eyes. At last, before the kettle 
had begun to sing even, the drowsiness over- 
powered her, her head sank down on her arms, the 
lids fell, and the lips took back their happy 
curves. She had almost picked up again the 
thread of the broken dream, when Reeves’s voice 
came to her: “Paula, the kettle’s boiling. Gad! 
can’t you keep awake for two seconds?” 

Paula roused herself with a start and got up. 
She collected the materials for the tea, and made 
it and set the teapot down in the grate. Reeves 
watching her as she did so. Then she took an- 
other candle off the mantelpiece and lighted it. 
“There’s no milk and sugar up here. I must go 
and fetch them,” she said. 

Reeves made no answer, and she took the can- 
dle and went out. It was cold outside, and Paula 
shivered as she hurried down the stairs, the cold 
wind cutting her bare ankles above the slippers: 


PAULA 


281 


cold too in the big dining-room beneath. She 
found the sugar in the sideboard, and a new un- 
opened tin of condensed milk. “What a bore!” 
murmured Paula; “I must open this one.” She 
rose from her knees in front of the sideboard and 
looked in the drawer for the tin-opener. Then 
she knelt on the floor again and began to open 
the tin. Her hands were stiff with cold, and the 
light from the one flickering candle in the huge 
room was dim. She had almost completed the 
circle of the lid, when the tin-opener slipped and 
gashed across the hand that was holding the tin. 
The blood welled up, and Paula, afraid of its 
falling into the milk, was obliged to cease opera- 
tions. She picked up the tin, flung the opener 
back into the drawer, and taking the candle and 
sugar in the other hand, went upstairs again. 

Reeves glanced up. “What an infernal time 
you’ve been! What have you done?” he added, 
seeing the zigzag cut bleeding on her left hand. 

“Cut it in opening the tin, that’s all,” returned 
Paula. She twisted a handkercliief round her 
hand and then finished making the tea. In a few 
seconds more she came up to Reeves on the rug, 
carrying a steaming, fragrant cup, and held it 
out to him. Reeves looked up. His pallid, sod- 
den face looked positively green as he raised it 
to her. Then he closed his fist suddenly and 
struck the whole thing out of her hand. 

“Damn you! do you suppose I want your 
beastly tea?” The cup and saucer fell clattering 


282 


PAULA 


and tinkling to the floor, and broke into frag- 
ments at her feet. The steaming liquid splashed 
across her wounded hand and poured in a stream 
down the front of her dressing-gown. Paula fell 
back from him a step or two and looked at him 
with eyes growing wide in indignation and a 
hard scorn settling on her white face. 

“Why did you ask for it then?” she said con- 
temptuously. 

Reeves got up and approached her. Paula did 
not retreat. Nothing but intense disdain and 
loathing looked out of her flashing eyes. “I woke 
you up, and made you get up, because you were 
dreaming of that cursed Halham; I know you 
were.” 

Paula burst into a contemptuous laugh. 
“Well, what then? Are you going to try to con- 
trol my dreams?” Reeves was silent. In silence 
they both stood looking at each other, their eyes 
fixed on one another’s. In hers were a supreme 
confidence and defiance, in his a hungry, helpless 
jealousy. He looked over her slender and grace- 
ful frame, built for beauty and love and pleasure, 
and not for strength, yet a sense of his own utter 
powerlessness rushed over him. If he tore this 
in pieces, he could not reach the scornful soul 
that blazed upon him through those eyes. 

After a second or two Paula turned from him 
and sat down in an easy-chair by the side of 
the fire: Reeves took the one opposite to her. 
Neither spoke. After a time the girl’s head 


PAULA 


283 


dropped back on the chair cushion, and her eyes 
closed. Reeves watched her vindictively for a 
few moments, and then raised the tongs from the 
grate and flung them across the bars, whence 
they fell into the fender with a tremendous clat- 
ter. Paula started and sat up. 

“I beg your pardon,” said Reeves, mockingly. 
Paula knew that the tongs had been thrown, and 
said nothing. She saw that he did not mean to 
let her go to sleep for some time. It was all very 
childish and foolish, she thought; hut, anyway, 
she could think if she could not dream. She sat 
up, leaning her elbows on her knees, yawning 
and rubbing her tired eyes as she stared into the 
Are. Between them, on the floor, lay the broken 
cup, and the tea soaking into the rug. Her 
thoughts went over the many times she had made 
coffee for Vincent, and what a delight it had 
always been to attain with care just the right 
degree of strength, and with what a smile he had 
always taken it, weak or strong, or smoked so 
that he could hardly drink it; for it would get 
smoked with that spirit-lamp of theirs, some- 
times, and 

“Paula!” 

“Yes?” 

“What are you thinking of?” 

“Of how one makes coffee.” 

To this Reeves made no response. He simply 
kicked the poker into the grate as he stretched 
out his feet and sat farther back in his chair. It 


284 


PAULA 


was cold and he felt himself growing sleepy, and 
took a cigar to keep himself awake. As Paula 
rarely answered in anything except monosylla- 
bles, he had got out of the habit of talking with 
her, and conversation was a lost art between them. 
Paula watched him settle himself comfortably in 
the chair and put his head back; she saw he was 
getting very sleepy, then she went back to her 
thoughts: when she next looked at him his eye- 
lids had fallen over his eyes, but he still smoked; 
a few seconds later the cigar dropped out of his 
mouth and his chin sank forward on his chest. 
He was asleep. Paula smiled, got up, slid out of 
her dressing-gown and slippers, and got into bed. 
There she stretched out her arms, smiled a freed, 
happy smile, and with a little sigh of contentment 
drifted back to her dreams. 

Reeves, still impressed with the fancy he was 
mounting guard over her, slept on in an uncom- 
fortable position by the dying fire. 


XV 


One afternoon early in January, Paula coming in 
late found Reeves seated hunched over the fire 
with flushed face and bright eyes. “What’s 
the matter?” she asked, as she stood by the 
mantelpiece taking off hei^ veil before the 
glass. 

“Got a confounded throat,” muttered Reeves 
thickly in a scarcely audible tone. 

Paula looked at him closely. “You were all 
right this morning; what have you done?” she 
asked. 

“Got a chill, I think; it’s so beastly cold.” 

“Yes, it is cold,” returned Paula, looking 
through the windows, following with her eyes the 
great irregular patches of snow descending 
through tK3 leaden atmosphere from the leaden 
sky. It was cold. Even in their firelit room they 
felt it. The cold forced itself, an invincible 
enemy, through the curtained windows. Paula 
shivered. Something seemed passing through 
the dusky room. She turned and lit the gas her- 
self, and pulled the blinds down sharply. Then 
she looked at Reeves again. 

“Hadn’t you better see a doctor?” she said in 
a constrained voice. 

Reeves turned and glared at her out of red, 


286 


PAULA 


vitreous eyes. ‘‘No ; what damned rot ! I’m com- 
ing down to the theatre!” 

Paula did not answer. She shrugged her 
shoulders and left the room in silence. Upstairs 
in the cold bedroom, which was nearly dark, she 
threw herself suddenly on her knees by the bed 
and clasped her hands. “My God!” she mur- 
mured, “he is ill, going to he perhaps very ill, 
give me strength not to wish, not to pray that he 
may die. Help me to do everything to save him: 
he is a fellow-creature. Oh, thou who hast done 
so much, give me strength not to wish for his 
death !” She knelt with bent head : there was no 
answer in the gloom of the quiet room, but from 
intense prayer there flows a calm as from our 
intense desires. It is its own answer. 

After a few seconds Paula rose, with the stress 
of passion passed by, and dressed composedly 
and went downstairs. Reeves had not stirred, 
but still, with his great fur coat on, sat cowering 
over the fire. Dinner was brought up, but he 
would not move to the table. Paula had hers 
alone, and then silently put on her cloak and came 
back to the drawing-room. Here she stood wait- 
ing, drawing on her gloves and buttoning them. 
Reeves did not stir. At last, when the clock al- 
lowed no further latitude, she said, “Are you 
coming, Dick?” 

“Damn it! how can I come? Can’t you see 
I’m too ill?” he answered, with his hand at his 
throat. 


PAULA 287 

“Shall I stay?” asked Paula; “there’s still time 
to send round to May?” 

“No; for God’s sake, go and leave me in 
peace !” 

Paula went out in silence, closing the door 
softly behind her. That night on the boards the 
old spirit came back to her, the old life ran 
through her, leaping and racing through her 
veins. Do what she would she could not check 
it. “Am I glad?” she asked herself. And it 
seemed to her, with her soft heart, cruel to be 
glad. But some new animation thrilled and fired 
her blood that night. The stall lisped languidly 
she’d never been in better form, and the gallery 
yelled and roared in its delight. The Arabian 
dance was encored more wildly than usual, and 
for the first time Paula yielded and granted the 
encore. Did something whisper to her she would 
never dance again? The supple body, whose 
movements were like melodies, responded untir- 
ingly to the will to-night. She would have liked 
to dance on till she fell dead from the delicious 
fatigue of it. Afterwards people said she had 
never danced as on the first and last nights of her 
appeaa*ance. 

In the middle of the night Paula was suddenly 
:iWakened. “Paula !” It was Reeves’s voice that 
came hollow and deep to her ear. She started up. 
“Listen,” he said, and he drew a deep breath. 
From his chest came a loud, creaking wheeze. It 
went through the silent room like the whizz of a 


288 


PAULA 


vibrating string and the creaking of a cart-wheel. 
“I am very ill; send for a doctor.” His voice was 
loosened and clear now, and shook with fear; he 
cowered down, making a huge, trembling heap 
beneath the bed-clothes. Paula was on her feet 
in a moment. 

“James is so slow. I’ll go myself,” she said, 
lighting a candle, and then commencing to hur- 
riedly put on her shoes and stockings. 

“Yes, go yourself; only be quick,” muttered 
Reeves from the bed, as if death would be upon 
him in the next five minutes. It was a freezing 
night. Paula’s fingers grew so cold, even in the 
room, that she could hardly get her clothes on. 
“Be quick,” Reeves kept groaning from the bed, 
and in less than five minutes Paula slipped out of 
the room, dressed and wrapped in a sealskin 
cloak, and with a fur hat on her hastily coiled-up 
hair. She roused their maidservant as she went 
down, and then let herself out into the snowy 
night. 

It was just three: a bell tolled out the strokes 
as she stepped on to the frozen pavement. The 
night was superb. With a temperature many 
degrees below zero, the air was flooded with a 
glory of moonlight, making the deserted streets 
brilliant in their snowy desolation. Paula knew 
her way to the doctor’s, and walked on rapidly. 
Overhead, far, far off, unusually high it seemed 
in the clear atmosphere, hung the moon in its cold, 
lonely splendour. Paula glanced up, and won- 


PAULA 


289 


dered with wild vehement questioning whether 
that same moon were shining now on Vincent. 
Where was he? Where was he? 

She reached the doctor’s house in a few minutes 
and rang the night-bell beneath the red lamp, and 
waited on the steps thick in deep snow, looking 
up with blurred, tear-filled eyes to the marvellous 
glory of the sky. After a time a servant came 
yawning to' the door. “Tell Dr. Anderson,” said 
Paula as she entered, “Mrs. Reeves is here, and 
wants him to come back to her husband at once.” 
The servant closed the door and showed Paula 
into a large dining-room, lit one burner of the gas, 
and withdrew. Paula found her way to the sofa 
in the dim light, and sat down there amongst the 
shadows cast by the large furniture. 

“Suppose he dies?” She tried to shut her ears 
to the words, tried to throw them out of her brain, 
but they seemed said outside herself — shouted 
down from the ceiling and by the shadows at her 
side. “You are free, you are free,” and devils 
seemed running over the room, gambolling and 
laughing, and saying, “You are free.” 

Anderson did not keep her long. He hurried 
on his clothes and came down almost within the 
five minutes she had taken for herself. He gave 
her his arm as they walked back together, and 
Paula told him the details of her husband’s illness. 

“I have a feeling it is serious. I can’t tell quite 
why,” she said, as they went up to Reeves’s room 
together. Reeves was breathing heavily as they 


290 


PAULA 


entered, and the wheezing of the lungs could be 
heard distinctly in the quiet room. 

‘What a damned time you’ve been!” he mur- 
mured fretfully. “Ah, Anderson, there you are! 
what the devil’s the matter with me, eh?” 

Paula stirred the fire that the maid had lighted 
in her absence, and sat down by it in her outdoor 
things, while the doctor went up to the bed and 
examined the crackling lungs. When he came 
over to her afterwards he made some excuse of 
writing the prescriptions, and they went down to 
the drawing-room together. There he told her 
Reeves was in serious danger, had severe con- 
gestion of both lungs, and would need the most 
careful nursing. “Let me send you a trained 
nurse,” he added sympathetically. 

“No,” said Paula, simply; “I will nurse him. 
I don’t believe in hired nurses. Experience can- 
not teach them so much as real anxiety for the 
patient does.” 

“But it’s impossible. You could not attend the 
theatre!” 

“The theatre must go ; that is to say, my under- 
study must,” Paula answered, smiling. “I shall' 
not leave him till I’ve got him well.” 

The doctor wasted no time in further opposi- 
tion. He stood explaining and directing all that 
had to be done, and Paula stood before him listen- 
ing, with her intelligent face raised to his and her 
eyes wide with attention. “And above all things, 
be careful with the chlorodyne,” he finished; “one 


PAULA 


291 ’ 


drop more of that than the dose might he fatal to 
him in his state.” Then he buttoned his overcoat, 
said he’d call in the morning, wished her good- 
night, and departed. 

Paula remained standing motionless in the vast 
empty room, the candle on the table sending its 
flickering glare over her face. It was white now, 
in a terrible, startled pallor. The doctor’s last 
words seemed still beating through the air in great 
throbbing reverberations. A great temptation, 
like a huge beast of prey, leapt upon her sud- 
denly, and held her paralysed and quivering in 
its fangs. A torrent of thoughts rushed through 
her brain. She was hardly responsible for them ; 
they tore madly through her brain without her 
will, without her knowing whence they came, as 
shooting pains dart through the body. She had 
his life in her hands, then; a sudden quiver of her 
Angers as she poured out the chlorodyne, a few 
drops extra jerked into the glass, and she was 
free. No one could tell her simulated grief after- 
wards from inconsolable sorrow. There was no 
danger for herself, no risk. A turn of her wrist, 
and her liberty was regained. Life, a sweet, 
shimmering vision, tremulous with love and joy, 
sparkling with sunlight, beckoned and called her. 

She sank into a chair and laid her head down 
on the table, and stretched out her arms on its 
hard black surface in a sudden agony. And her 
temptation came and played with her. The great 
beast slunk to her side again, and first one heavy; 


292 ? 


PAUUA 


paw seemed laid upon her and then another; it 
fawned upon her and mauled her as a tiger mauls 
its prey. The poor bleeding, gasping soul turned 
blindly to its idea of God, and called for aid, and 
there was none. Then suddenly the eyes of Vin- 
cent came before her, the touch of his hand was 
on hers, his voice in her ears. She remembered 
how close their union had been, that sacred union, 
that perfect fusion of two souls, when thought 
seems to pass and repass without the need of 
speech. There were no recesses of her mind shut 
against him, no thoughts before which she drew 
a veil, to him. The doors of her soul stood always 
open for him. No impulses crossed the threshold 
which she feared his meeting. And now her sanc- 
tuary was crowded, trampled over with red- 
stained thoughts, to which she would not give the 
name. A horrible sick loathing of herself and 
them crept over her. Slowly she wrestled herself 
free from the temptation and looked up with a 
little smile on her lips. She thought she still saw 
the eyes she loved watching her. The table where 
she had raised her forehead from its surface was 
dull and damp with the sweat of pain and shame. 

A furious banging on the ceiling overhead 
echoed through the room. Paula started and 
glanced at the clock face. Only five minutes since 
the doctor had left. And what a sea of emotion 
had swept over her in that time — swept over and 
gone by! She picked up the candle and went 
upstairs. Reeves was sitting up in bed; glaring 


PAULA 


293 


angrily, the stick he had thumped upon the floor 
.with still clutched in his hand. “Why didn’t you 
come up before?” he said angrily; “I heard the 
doctor go almost directly. I want that chloro- 
dyne; my chest feels like iron.” 

Paula moved mechanically towards the mantel- 
piece and took down the bottle and a glass. She 
unscrewed the cork and rested the bottle neck on 
the edge of the tumbler . . . one . . . two . . . 
nine drops had fallen. 

“Damn you, what a time you are! what are you 
doing?” called Reeves from the bed. He had 
lain back and could not see her now. 

His exclamation startled her: her hand shook, 
and three drops fell hurriedly into the glass. It 
was two more than the dose. Paula took up the 
tumbler with her other hand and flung the con- 
tents into the fire. “I wish you would be quiet 
while I am measuring it,” she said, taking a clean 
glass; “y^^ make me nervous, and my hand 
shakes so that I can’t do it correctly.” 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter to a drop,” grumbled 
Reeves, tossing in the bed. 

Paula said nothing. She brought him the wine- 
glass with ten drops accurately measured, in si- 
lence. 

“Didn’t Anderson say I was to have a nurse? 
When’s she coming?” said Reeves, after he had 
taken the dose. 

“I told him there was no need,” returned 
Paula, “as I am here.” 


294 


PAULA 


“Oh!’' ejaculated Reeves simply. 

“I will get you a nurse if you would like it 
better,” said Paula, sitting down in the arm-chair 
by the bed and passing her hand across her fore- 
head. She felt tired and weak and ill and sick 
with the despair of her life. 

“Of course I shouldn’t,” answered Reeves. 
“Who could be better than Paula?” 

The girl smiled faintly. After a time Reeves 
dozed into an uneasy slumber, and his wife sat 
watching him. 


XVI 


A HOT fire glowed in the grate, staining the light 
hearth-rug a deep crimson, and throwing a blood- 
red light on Paula’s hands and the under part of 
her white throat, as she sat drooping sideways in 
the arm-chair by the grate in Peeves’s bedroom. 
She was very tired, and her lids kept creeping 
down slowly over her bloodshot eyes as she sat, 
and then before they quite closed she would tear 
them open again with a guilty start. The room 
was very silent. Nothing but a very faint ticking 
of the clock and the breathing of the sleeper in 
the bed broke the stillness. Outside the snow was 
falling heavily, and had been for many hours. 
It was now the first hour of the new day. Paula 
roused herself and leant forward to the fire. It 
was a very white, worn, haggard face that the 
red light tinged, and deep lines were drawn on 
it, through she was barely past six-and-twenty. 
She listened to the light, regular breathing from 
the bed intently. Yes, he was better, distinctly, 
and the doctor had said there was no doubt he 
would live now. 

An utter dreary hopelessness that had none of 
the old rebellious passion in it took possession of 
her face. It was the fifth day of Reeves’s illness, 
and for all that time his wife had never left his 


296 


PAULA 


bedside. The outside world seemed almost to her 
to have ceased to exist, so intently had all her 
energies and all her thoughts been concentrated 
here. For all that time Reeves had been in seri- 
ous danger and hourly suffering and pain, and 
Paula had felt, to her joy and relief, a tide of 
sympathy and pity rising in her heart that swept 
away all other feelings before it. She had no 
need to coerce herself. He was now a suffering 
fellow-creature, and as such appealed to her. So 
long as his danger lasted she felt nothing but the 
spontaneous generous desire to shield him from, 
it, but now the danger was past, and the first 
thankfulness over, a dead weight seemed falling 
back on her heart. She, as the doctor had said, 
had saved him. 

Slowly the realisation came to her as she sat 
there: she was not glad — she wanted to be, but 
she could not. She could not shake from her 
the thought that it was her jailor she had suc- 
ceeded in bringing back to life. Her prison gates 
were being barred up again, her warder coming 
back to his post. The girl leant forward, on her 
bowed shoulders seemed to fall a crushing bur- 
den, in her breast was a fierce tearing struggle, 
in her brain a wearied, despairing questioning. 
What is right? She listened to the light breath- 
ing: that man for whose life she had been working 
for the past five days, to whom she had been giv- 
ing her tenderness and sympathy, was Vincent’s 
y/ould-be murderer, the one who had stolen her 


PAULA 297 

from him, who would have taken his life, who had 
succeeded perhaps in blighting it. 

And who was the man ethically to whom she 
owed the most — the man to whom she had first 
given her soul, who had loved her, always yielded 
to her, suffered for her, who would have shielded 
her, died for her; or this man who had destroyed 
her life, destroyed her happiness, destroyed her 
better self? It seemed suddenly unjust to her 
that she had sided with his enemy against the 
man she loved. The image of Vincent’s face rose 
before her in the dull red glow of the coals, tender, 
and kind, and sad. She looked at it. “He would 
have killed you,” she murmured; “but yet, here, 
now, you would not have liked me to become a 
murderess, even in heart, Vincent, would you?” 
She saw the face clearly, and it seemed to smile 
approval to her. There seemed to grow within 
her a sense of the great general law that overrides 
all personal enmities, all individual loves — the 
law of humanity. 

A cough from the bed, and Reeves flung back 
the counterpane. “I want more air: how hot the 
room is!” 

Paula started up. “I’ll put the door open,” 
she said. “Don’t get uncovered.” 

“Door? Door’s no good: put the window 
open.” 

“Oh, Dick, it’s impossible,” said Paula, in dis- 
may. “It will kill you. It is bitterly cold out- 
side.” 


298 


PAULA 


‘'I’m suffocated, I tell you,” said Reeves, sit- 
ting up in bed. “You’ve got the room too hot; 
open the window.” 

“I can let the fire go down. You must not 
have the window open,” said Paula, “it may kill 
you.” 

“Well, and very glad I expect you’d be if it 
did,” said Reeves, preparing to scramble out of 
bed. It was pitiful to see how he had wasted in 
those five days. The skin at his throat hung loose 
in great wrinkles. His chest, as the shirt fell 
open, showed the great bones under the clammy 
skin. Paula saw the sweat glistening on it in the 
candle-light. She crossed to the window and 
barred his approach to it. 

“Dick, you are mad!” said Paula, standing 
with her back to the window, and holding the 
curtains together behind her. “This is simple 
suicide.” 

“You don’t — know what it is to feel — choked,” 
gasped Reeves. He stood supporting himself by 
the bedpost. He seemed unable for the moment 
to cough or speak or even breathe. His face 
turned to a livid pallor. “The medicine,” he 
gasped. 

Paula flew to the mantelpiece to get the bottle. 
Reeves staggered to the window, wrenched aside 
the curtains, sent up the spring-blind, and, before 
Paula could reach him again, had smashed out a 
piece of one of the lower panes with one of the 
brushes from the toilet-table. Then he leaned 


PAULA 


299 


forward, drawing in the icy air with delight. The 
jagged hole gaped to the blackness outside. The 
snow was falling quickly; a few soft flakes came 
gently whirling in, and rested unmelting on the 
window-ledge. Paula came up to him despair- 
ingly. Five days work undone in five seconds. 
She caught a shawl off the bed and threw it round 
his shoulders and crossed it over his bare chest. 
Reeves began to cough. 

“Ah, that’s better,” he said, and coughed vio- 
lently. He felt he could breathe again. “That’s 
done me a lot of good. I believe you wanted to 
smother me, Polly.” 

Paula smiled a very sad smile. “Pray, pray, 
come away,” was all she said. 

Reeves coughed again, drawing in more cold 
air. “You don’t know how much better it makes 
me feel,” he said. 

“Yes, it may for a few minutes; but it is death, 
I know it is. Do listen to me,” said Paula, wring- 
ing her hands. The snowflakes were coming in 
fast now, one or two fell and rested softly on 
Reeves’s damp, rough hair. He began to shiver. 

“Yes, it is cold; perhaps you’re right. I’ll get 
back to bed, I think.” He rose, and Paula helped 
him back to the bed. As he lay down and she 
stooped over him to arrange the clothes, she 
heard the deep jarring of the breath through 
the hardening lungs. All night she watched him, 
and all night he tossed and moaned and swore 
at her for not preventing his going to the window. 


300 


PAULA 


In the morning he lay back amongst the pillows 
almost speechless, and the effort to breathe made 
his face and hair damp with sweat. 

When the doctor came he looked from the livid 
face in the bed to the blanched one beside it in 
blank inquiry. Paula told him mechanically the 
events of the night in a thin strained voice. She 
felt a dim sense now of drifting on the current of 
events. Her work had been taken out of her 
hands. The doctor said nothing. His face took 
an extra shade on its professional gravity. He 
tested his patient’s chest, prescribed a soothing 
draught, and ordered a blister to be put over the 
left lung. Downstairs he said to Paula, ‘‘The 
case is quite hopeless now, I’m afraid. The lungs 
are almost solid. Yesterday they were pretty 
clear, in fact he was mending fast.” 

“I tried to prevent his going to the window,” 
murmured Paula. The doctor pressed her hand. 

“I am sure that you have done all that was 
possible,” he said, sympathetically. “These 
things are in higher hands than ours. I will come 
again in the evening,” and he left. But he came 
back before the evening, haunted by Paula’s wide, 
burning, tearless eyes. 

It was the dusk of the closing afternoon. 
Paula sat motionless by the bed as the struggling 
breath came and went with difficulty. Ther^ was 
nothing to do now except to wait. Uncertainty, 
expectancy, were put by. Hope was done with. 
Paula sat there, with her hands idle in her lap, 


PAULA 


301 


her mind a blank. She had struggled and fought 
with herself, and forced herself to do what she 
could to save him, in the teeth of her own desires ; 
and now Fate had intervened and rendered her 
efforts null, and there was nothing she could do. 
She had hardly any sense of desire or gratitude 
or relief or regret. She felt crushed beneath a 
dull horror of depression. She could do no more. 
What would be would be. She had now merely 
to await the approach of death. The doctor stood 
by the fire, his eyes fixed anxiously on the dying 
man. The end could not be far off. Each breath 
was thicker, more laboured than the last, and he 
waited more from sympathy with the bowed 
figure by the bedside than from interest in his 
patient. 

“Paula” — Reeves’s voice came feebly from the 
pillow. The girl staggered to her feet and stood 
beside the bed, — “I’m dying, and I expect you’re 
— deuced glad — aren’t you?” His voice was 
uncertain and came with difficulty. He looked 
straight up into the pale, wretched face above 
him, with eyes that struggled painfully to see 
clearly through their gathering mists. Paula 
looked down on the drawn countenance, rapidly 
growing grey, and burst into a passion of sobs 
and agonised tears. 

“Oh^ no, no, I am not glad. I would save you 
now if I could, Dick.” It was true. She had 
absoliftely conquered herself. Reeves was to her 
now ^ot husband nor jailor, nor the murderer of 


802 


PAULA 


her lover, simply a fellow-creature calling to her 
from the Valley of the Shadow. 

“Well — any way,’’ said Reeves, after a minute, 
in which her great sobs went through the room, 
“I — suppose — you’ll go and live with that cursed 
Vincent now?” His voice was an anxious query : 
he waited for her answer while the hot tears 
dropped burning on his hand. 

“Oh — I don’t know — what will happen,” Paula 
answered in distraction. To her they both seemed 
standing in the shadow. The shores of life 
seemed far away. It was impossible for her to 
calculate and arrange for the future then, even 
to think of possibilities. 

“Well, listen,” said Reeves with a great effort: 
“I have left you everything. All my funds, the 
theatre freehold, everything to you, so long as you 
remain a widow, or even if you choose to marry 
some one else, but not him. If you live with him 
or marry him, you lose everything, do you under- 
stand? you get nothing from me.” He raised 
himself a little in his eagerness. The old bitter 
hate shone deep in his eyes beneath their glazing, 
clouded cornea. 

“Oh, don’t, don’t,” said Paula, the tears stream- 
ing down her worn, unhappy face. “I want 
nothing.” 

“No, I don’t suppose it will make any differ- 
ence,” returned Reeves, bitterly; “he’ll get you 
back now. Anyway, you’ve been mine — put your 
head down — kiss me.” 


PAULA 


303 


Paula bent down and set her quivering lips on 
his. Reeves tried to raise his arms and put them 
round her. There was a choking sound, and then 
a sudden scream from the girl. 

“Oh, come, he has broken a blood-vessel.” 

The doctor rushed to the bed. Reeves sat up 
waving his arms; his face was livid, the blood 
poured in a crimson stream from his mouth. The 
doctor drew Paula from the bed and out of the 
darkening room. Reeves’s eyes were still fixed 
on her. The last she saw were those two dim 
hungry eyes. 


XVII 


Reeves had been dead a fortnight — a fort- 
night that had been one blank of horror for Paula. 
For the first week she had sat, loaded with the 
black crepe her maid had hung upon her, in her 
drawing-room with the blinds lowered to the floor, 
motionless, in the semi -darkness. Callers came 
in large numbers, friends of Reeves, friends of 
hers, friends of both, besides all those who came 
to see how ‘‘she took it.” To a great many Paula 
refused admission. Those whom she did see went 
away quite satisfied, however. “Stupefied with 
grief, my dear, quite stupefied,” was the current 
remark made with much satisfaction by her 
woman friends to each other as they discussed 
her and sympathetically deplored her loss at their 
four o’clock teas. Her enemies and rivals 
frankly and openly declared, “It was all put on, 
and affectation, and that they had no patience 
themselves with such hypocrisy.” 

Widely removed from the fact, as usual, were 
these two verdicts. Paula was too careless and 
reckless by nature, and too arrogant in feeling 
ever to take the trouble to simulate an emotion 
she did not feel. With such a character the only 
difficulty is to induce it to bow sufficiently to the 
arbitrary conventions and laws of decorum set ug 


PAULA 


305 


by others. To go beyond this and feign a senti- 
ment to gain others’ good opinion, would be 
undreamed of in her mind. Nor was she stupe- 
fied by grief. Grief hardly entered into her brain. 
Her gay, volatile, impressionable nature was 
frozen by horror and shock. The artist, with his 
double nature, his human personal nature with 
all its capacity to feel its own human personal 
emotions, and his artistic impersonal nature 
which feels also acutely impersonal emotions, ex- 
periences exactly double of that which the average 
human being endures. As, while living with Vin- 
cent, Paula had been animated with a joy double 
that of an ordinary woman’s, her own personal 
joy added to the general joy of her nature in the 
sense of the delight of life, so here she suffered 
doubly. 

The horror of death, the terror and mystery 
and gloom of the grave, clung upon and op- 
pressed her impersonally with a heavy weight of 
pain and sorrow that would not have fallen at 
all upon a less sensitive mind, open only to per- 
sonal emotion. To the artistic nature, that feels 
through the intellect more than through the heart, 
the death of an enemy is little less horrible than 
that of a friend. To its impersonal eye, the terri- 
ble, ghastly tragedy of human life and death is 
always awful, always horrifying, whether or not 
personal tears fall for the life relinquished. And 
so she had sat, silent and suffering — suffering 
through the death of a man she had hated, as 


306 


PAULA 


a woman of a simple nature could never suffer 
for the dearest and best and most deeply-loved 
husband. 

Now those fourteen days of blackness had 
rolled past, and on this morning of February, 
superb in a flood of early spring sunlight, a sud- 
den rebellion of all her purely natural feelings 
against this crushing weight of indefinite depres- 
sion, this abstract sorrow, filled her. It was mid- 
day ; twelve was striking as she stood at her win- 
dow and raised the blind to. its utmost limit, 
letting streams of quivering sunlight pour into 
the room. She stood in it, rejoicing in its living 
warmth and gazing out through the dazzling 
sheen. “Such a little time,” she murmured, “and 
I shall be dead too. It is a crime to waste a 
moment of one’s life.” As she turned from the 
, window her eyes fell on the sombre, funereal folds 
of her dress, and a horror of it seized her. It was 
the badge of grief . But why? It was false. She 
was not grieved. 

She went upstairs, and in her room commenced 
to strip off the heavy, clinging black; the crepe 
rustled, and seemed to cry in the clutch of her 
feverish fingers; she could have torn it in strips 
in the revolt of all her pleasure-loving tempera- 
ment from the gloom it symbolised. As it was, 
she left the clothing a black mass upon the floor, 
and took another dress from her wardrobe and 
put it on. It was a light grey woollen cloth with 
a bodice of silver satin. She fastened it up rap- 


PAULA 


307 


idly, smiling faintly back to her image in the 
glass. A new gush of life sprang up in her as 
she saw herself again in familiar colour, and the 
sun glinting on her eyelashes and hair. Such a 
little time to be youthful and warm with life and 
pleasure! Remember? why should she remember 
a man she had loathed, a degradation that was 
over, a pain that was past? To forget is one of 
Nature’s most merciful laws. To forget was to 
annul. Not to realise a thing was for it not to be. 

That same afternoon she walked round to her 
brother’s rooms. To reach them she had to pass 
the house where Vincent’s flat was still kept on, 
unused. She glanced up and saw the blank win- 
dows, with their closed yellow blinds, upon the 
first floors. She shivered a little ; their blank im- 
passiveness, like the closed lids of a dead face, 
reminded her of Vincent’s horrible immovability 
at their last parting. ‘‘You have done with me;” 
she recalled the words and the tone. They cut 
across her softened mood of happiness, but it was 
only for an instant. “He will not reject me,” she 
thought, with a flush of triumph — the triumph of 
a woman who knows she has youth and a hundred 
other weapons at command to subdue the senses. 

“Charlie, I’ve come round to have tea with 
you,” were Paula’s words as she entered the little 
sitting-room, and saw her brother in an arm-chair 
by the fire studying a piece of manuscript music- 
paper. 

Charlie sprang up to welcome her. As he 


308 


PAULA 


kissed her his eyes fell with a glance of surprise 
on her light dress. Paula laughed. 

“Yes, I have gone out of mourning,” she said — 
“mourning! it’s absurd, it is hypocrisy. Do you 
know, Charlie, as I came down here, I passed 
Mrs. Leslie. Her first expression was a got-up 
look of sympathy, and then when she caught sight 
of my dress it changed to a glance of horror. She 
was so petrified by the sight of my grey gown 
that she couldn’t return my bow. People will 
think it awful, of course; but you understand, 
don’t you, Charlie?” she said caressingly, leaning 
her arms about his neck. “I did do all I could 
for Dick. I tried to keep him alive, but fate set- 
tled it differently. I have suffered a great deal, 
and there’s no use now in trying to prolong my 
unhappiness, in making a profession of a sorrow 
I can’t feel, is there?” 

“No, dear; of course not,” replied her brother. 
He took her outdoor things from her and drew 
forward a chair to the fire. She sat down in it 
opposite him and facing the stream of sunlight. 
It fell sparkling on the steel trimming at her 
throat, and shimmering over the glossy satin of 
her bodice ; it netted itself in her hair and sparkled 
in her blue eyes like gold in lapis lazuli as she 
looked across at him. She seemed fresh, un- 
touched as the soft young rose unfolding itself to 
the dewy morning on its native hedge. It was 
difficult to believe the soul within was seared and 
branded with sorrow, and shame, and sin. 


PAUOl 


309 


‘‘I am going to him,” she said, after a few 
minutes. 

Charlie did not look surprised. He had noticed 
she had changed her wedding-rings — the one on 
her hand now was Vincent's ; it was broader and 
thicker, easily distinguishable from the other. 
“You’d better let him know first,” he said merely, 
with prudent precaution. 

A smile and a flush together flickered over her 
face. “Oh, I should not dream of going unless 
I knew he wished it,” she answered. “I am going 
to wire him this afternoon.” She got up and 
crossed to the writing-table in the window. “May 
I have a piece of paper? Thanks, this will do; 
and I want you to tell me his exact address.” 
She came back to the fire and looked up at him 
questioningly with the paper in her hand. 

“Well, I haven’t heard from him for the last 
three months,” replied Charlie, “and I didn’t 
answer that letter. He did not ask after you, and 
it rather annoyed me, so I didn’t write again.” 

“Where was he then?” asked Paula. 

“Oh, as far as I remember, he said he was 
rather seedy, and didn’t know where to go to 
escape from the cold, and that he’d finally ar- 
ranged to take a villa at Ardenza, just out of 
Leghorn, for six months, with a George Stan- 
hope, — the Honourable George Stanhope, I be- 
lieve he is. Cracky place to go to, I thought; it’s 
not half warm enough,” 

^‘Then he would be there now, I suppose?” 


310 


PAULA 


“I suppose so. It’s about three months ago, 
and they were to have the villa for six.” 

“Well, what’s the address?” 

“Villa Uffizi, Ardenza, Livorno, Italy.” 

Paula wrote the address and a line under it, 
and then handed the paper across to her brother. 
He read — “Dick is dead. May I come to you?” 

“Give it back to me, Charlie; I am going to 
take it at once,” and she held out her hand impa- 
tiently to take it back. “Where did you put my 
things? I am going down to the post now. Are 
you going to be in to tea — ^you are? then I’ll come 
back directly. Wait for me.” She had put on 
her hat and jacket again as she spoke. Charlie 
offered to take the telegram for her, but she pre- 
ferred to go herself, and went out slowly down 
towards the Regent Street Post Office. She felt 
happy, buoyant with hope and expectation. She 
seemed stepping out of those black years behind 
her, as a prisoner steps free from his struck-off 
fetters. 

When she came back she found the tea was 
already set for them on a little round table near 
the fire. The sun fell across the pale blue of the 
china and glinted on the burnished copper of the 
urn, throwing up the delicate harmony of colour; 
the fire glowed red, and Charlie leaned waiting 
for her in the depths of his arm-chair. 

“I can get an answer in four hours,” she re- 
marked, coming over and raising the cover of the 
muffin dish. “It’s just four now,” she added, 


PAULA 


311 


glancing at the clock. ‘'It’s no use being im- 
patient till eight. Shall I make the tea, Charlie ?” 

"It’s made. You can pour it out, if you like,” 
he answered, and watched her lazily as she did so. 
They drank their tea, Paula laughing and talldng 
in her gay, light voice, and crunching up the 
muffins in her dazzling teeth. 

‘T don’t feel as if I should ever appear on the 
stage again,” she said in a pause of the talk and 
the muffins. "And perhaps it’s better not. Pos- 
sibly the gods will get over their sulks with me 
then.” 

After tea she roamed restlessly about the room, 
finally opening the piano and striking a few notes 
on it. 

"Do you know what that is, Charlie?” she 
asked. 

"Yes; Handel’s ‘Lago.’” 

" 'Rest, Heavenly Rest,’ Vincent’s favourite 
thing.” She struck a few more notes, and then 
sang softly with them, "And I shall wake no 
more ...” "Ah !” she sighed, and gently closed 
the lid, "we want him here to play and sing it.” 

A few seconds before eight o’clock, the tele- 
graph knock came distinctly to them. Paula 
abruptly ceased her laughing talk, and in pity for 
her whitening face, Charlie ran down himself and 
took the missive from the boy. Paula tore it 
open with a hand that cockled the paper from its 
nervous dampness, and read it aloud — "Yes; 
come at once.” 


XVIII 


Rushing through the flat, low-lying plains that 
stretch between Genoa and Leghorn, the evening 
train, with ice-bound windows, sped on through 
the freezing darkness, carrying amongst its num- 
bers of living human anxious brains at least one 
overflowing with the joy in life that is the most 
religious gratitude humanity can give to its Crea- 
tor. In one of the first-class carriages, nestled 
into a corner with her bright head leaning back 
on the cushions, and her sealskin and velvet and 
furs loosened from her round white neck, sat 
Paula, her blue eyes filled with a dreaming con- 
tentment, that grew ever more happy as mile after 
mile of the dreary swampy landscape was left 
behind them. Blind and curtains were drawn at 
either end of the carriage, foot-warmers lay along 
the floor, and the lamp above burned brightly; 
inside, one was hardly conscious of the deadly 
cold of the night. 

At the opposite end of the compartment, erect 
and stiff, sat another feminine figure — feminine 
presumably it was from the dress, though so flat- 
breasted, so angular, it might have been of any 
sex. The costume was a severe and simple one 
of tweed, and a tweed tourist cap surmounted the 
^woman’s face and seemed to match exactly its 


PAULA 


313 


brownish yellow tint. Her stout, massive-looking 
feet in thick boots, plainly visible under her short 
skirt, were planted staidly on the foot-warmer, 
and her ringless hands, thin and white, with large 
polished bones, lay loosely on the red Bradshaw 
on her knees. She might have been of any age — 
thirty or fifty. Who can tell? A woman who 
has never been loved seems to have no definable 
age. And surely she never had been loved, this 
girl ; her straight hair of a faded brown, smoothed 
thinly back beneath her tweed cap, her lifeless 
eyes, her thin, pale purple lips closed so firmly 
over her massive yellow teeth, proclaimed it si- 
lently. Yet she had good straight features when- 
ever she turned her profile, only the same move- 
ment unluckily revealed her thin yellow neck, 
looking like parchment against her man’s collar. 
Above all, there was the stamp of appalling virtue 
upon her, that the hardiest man would hesitate to 
interfere with. 

Paula, as she leant back in her warm, soft, 
scented repose, watched her with her slumberous 
eyes, veiled by the long curled lashes, in wonder, 
and not a little awe. The contrast she presented 
to this other human being of the same sex, the 
same rank, and possibly even the same age, was 
sharp, tremendous. Paula with her rose and 
white skin and her vivid eyes, the delicious, melt- 
ing crimson of her lips, the glow of life and ex- 
pression on her face, and that soft smooth throat 
mth those two charming lines, the famous collier 


314 


PAULA 


de Venus j indenting its sheeny, satiny fulness — 
Paula in her luxurious clothing, her supple atti- 
tude, seeming to breathe of life and its pleasure, 
a thing made for caresses. 

Her eyes rested on the other’s ringless hands. 
What had she done with her years? she wondered, 
and what did she feel? Had she never longed to 
open life’s book and read? What had she known? 
Anything? She had perhaps known the joy of 
work, the joy of art, the joy of study; but had 
she never known the joy of love, the joy of her 
womanhood, the joy of submission, the ecstasy of 
self lost in another? No, she felt sure she had 
not; and a great thankfulness to her own fate 
rushed into her heart, that though she had suf- 
fered in agony and travail of spirit, yet it had 
been given to her to know life and to live it. 
Work, art, study, ambition, fame, success, love — 
she had known them all, and the bitterness, and 
the vanity, and the joy of them. Better this, ten 
million times better, than the calm self-annihila- 
tion that had been allotted to the other. 

Like true British first-class passengers, Paula 
and this girl, compatriots in a foreign land, had 
travelled hundreds of miles without exchanging 
a word; but the compartment held one other 
passenger besides themselves. This was a young 
Italian peasant with a child in her arms. Paula’s 
attention had been called to her at Genoa, where 
she was standing on the platform protesting with 
the guard, who was anxious to hurry her into a 


PAULA 


315 


third-class compartment already nearly full of 
a swearing, singing, smoking, drunken crowd of 
Neapolitan sailors. Paula, attracted by the shrill 
‘^Dio miosT and ^‘Per BaccosT had opened her 
carriage window and leaned out into the icy air. 
By listening attentively she caught the gist of the 
quarrel. It seemed that the only tliird-class com- 
partment reserved for women only was quite full, 
and that the young peasant, for the sake of her 
child, objected to being locked in with a drunken 
masculine crowd alone. Paula heard so much, 
and then set wide her door and called the guard. 

“Bring her in here,” she said, “and I will pay 
her extra fare.” Her Italian was pretty good 
and her dress magnificent, so the Italian managed 
to comprehend. 

“But, signora,” he protested, “this is a first- 
class, and the woman is but a peasant.” 

“She is a mother,” responded Paula gravely, 
“and these are two lire,” she added, laughing, 
putting them in the man’s hand; “bring her in.” 

Thus the young peasant woman had been 
installed opposite Paula, wooden sabots, yel- 
low shawl, green handkerchief over her head, 
wrapped-up baby, and all. Paula, abruptly 
bringing her gaze back from the gaunt figure in 
the far corner, now turned it softly on the picture 
opposite her. The women’s eyes met and they 
both smiled. 

“He sleeps well,” Paula said, gently leaning 
forward and looking at the child in her arms. 


316 


PAULA 


The mother’s liquid brown eyes flashed with 
grateful fire. “Yes ; it was so good of the signora 
to have us in here. It is warm and quiet. No 
wonder the angel sleeps.” 

She spoke with a trace of the Neapolitan dia- 
lect, but with attention Paula could follow and 
divine her meaning. She leant forward gazing 
at the child. The mother, deeply flattered, began 
to prattle with pride about her own concerns. 
Yes, it was a happy, healthy child, and never 
cried; and there was only one other thing in the 
world that she loved better, and that was its 
father. Some women loved their children better 
than their husbands or lovers, but she for her part 
would always love her man the best. Yes, ah 
yes, it w^as a love-child, but the father had married 
her now, and they had a little farm outside 
Livorno and were quite happy. Hearing its 
mother’s chatter, the child woke up and began to 
ciy and struggle. Then the woman unfastened 
her yellow shawl, opened her bodice, and without 
excuse or embarrassment began to suckle him, 
w hile Paula gazed at her with such soft inquiring 
and yet sympathetic, comprehensive eyes, that 
they could not have embarrassed any one. Here 
was an emotion she had not felt, a love she had 
not knowm, a page in the Book of Life she had 
not read, and she looked at this common woman 
before her wdth respect tinged with envy. It was 
not wholly new to her that which she felt now. 
Ever since she had first loved Vincent there had 


PAULA 


317 


been a smothered longing within her, a realisation 
that a cliild would be the sweetest tie that could 
exist between them. But she had always mocked 
at herself, and her reason had told her that a child 
is a trouble and a fetter, and that she herself 
would tire of it. Still the instincts within her 
called gently but persistently. “May I take him 
for a little while?’’ she said timidly to the peasant, 
as the satisfied child was sinking back to slumber 
in its mother’s arms. She smiled proudly as she 
placed the baby into Paula’s outstretched arms, 
which closed round it softly and drew it up ten- 
derly to her beautiful youthful bosom. The child 
did not scream nor seem to object to the trans- 
ference; it nestled its face against her velvet 
bodice, and seemed soothed by the delicious 
warmth of her caressing arms. And Paula, feel- 
ing those subdued instincts rising up in her with 
sudden violence, leant over it and looked pas- 
sionately down at it, its wonderful lustrous, trans- 
parent, olive skin, its eyes of liquid onyx, its little 
crimson mouth. 

“The signora is fond of children?” said the 
genial Italian woman, smilingly, while their fel- 
low-passenger watched tliis little drama from the 
far end with a stony British impassivity. 

Paula started and looked up. “No — oh no,” 
she stammered, confusedly. It seemed absurd to 
her to lay claim to the general sentiment. She 
had always disliked children; did so still; their 
deficient intellects oppressed her. She avoided 


318 


PAULA 


their society and had never coveted their posses- 
sion — on the contrary, dreaded it. It was only 
when she thought of the man she loved that her 
heart melted within her. She would have valued 
a child as being the most adequate visible proof 
of how deeply she loved him. It was not the 
child, but the state of maternity that attracted 
her, this phase of life she would pass through, the 
suffering and the burden of it, and the subsequent 
responsibilities that she would like to face for this 
man alone. 

“No?” said the woman, smiling indulgently; 
“I would swear that the signora loves her hus- 
band then?” 

“Yes, oh yes,” responded Paula, fervently, with 
glowing eyes. 

The little brown-faced woman nodded com- 
placently, and folded her mittened hands one over 
the other. “And the signora has no children of 
her own?” 

Paula shook her head. She could not speak 
for the minute, as, full of emotion, she bent over 
the child. Suppose its eyes were deep blue like 
Vincent’s eyes, and that olive skin of a perfect 
paleness? She felt a sudden drag of passionate 
love at her heart. 

“Ah, well, the signora is going to her husband, 
and she loves him, and all the English are lovely. 
The signora’s hair is like the saints’ in the cathe- 
dral. Children will be sent her, that is certain.” 

Paula raised her face; her eyes were suffused 


PAULA 


319 


with happy tears. She stretched out her arms and 
put the child tenderly back in his mother’s arms, 
for the train was perceptibly slowing. “Per- 
haps,” she murmured, “if the fates are kind.” 
The British miss at the end busied herself with 
drawing on her gloves and folding up her wraps. 
Paula fastened her cloak again and snapped her 
open handbag. 

“Shall you go on out to your farm to-night?” 
she asked the woman. 

mioT she exclaimed, glancing through 
the window as she pulled aside the blind; “such a 
night as this! No. I go to my mother, and then 
on to-morrow if the weather mends.” 

Paula smiled to herself, and wondered if any 
earthly force could prevent her from reaching 
Vincent that evening. “I have to go a long way 
out, beyond Ardenza, seven miles,” she said, 
smiling. 

“But it’s impossible,” exclaimed the little 
peasant, horrified. “Ardenza is three miles from 
Livorno, and then seven miles beyond that 1 It’s 
impossible. There will be no carriages, no horses, 
on a night like this.” 

Other people’s impossibilities always fascinated 
Paula, but she would not enter into a discussion 
now. The train had come to a standstill. “We 
must see,” she said simply, and then helped her 
down from the high carriage on to the platform. 
She fixed the woman’s basket comfortably on her 
disengaged arm and kissed the child. The woman 


320 


PAULA 


said good-bye to her with many good wishes 
and blessings, and then moved down the plat- 
form. Paula was already surrounded by waiting 
porters. 

“I want to see the station-master,” she said. 
The station-master had come forward, and Paula 
turned to him. She said simply she must reach 
the Villa Uffizi that night, and asked what con- 
veyances there were. The answer was very simple 
too. There were none. If the signora could see 
the roads, she would understand that it was quite 
impossible for a horse to keep its footing, and, in 
any case, no one would attempt the journey that 
night ; the temperature was growing more insup- 
portable every hour. Ah! it was a winter indeed 
they would all remember ” 

“But — but — ” interrupted Paula, desperately, 
“I must get there, if possible. Is there no way 
you can suggest?” 

No, the station-master could suggest nothing. 
He shook his head, looked profoundly sympa- 
thetic, and mumbled Domani and Patienza by- 
way of consolation. 

"'Domanir repeated Paula. “But it won’t be 
any better to-morrow, will it?” 

The station-master could not say. Anything 
might happen in the blissful indefiniteness of to- 
morrow; it was evidently impossible for the 
signora to go that night, and he had been in- 
structed to tell the signora by Milord Stanhope 
that apartments had been engaged for her either 


PAULA 


321 


at this hotel close by, or the Hotel du Nord in the 
town, in case she found it necessary to stay in 
Livorno. “Would she not like to be conducted 
there at once?’’ 

The use of Stanhope’s name struck her with a 
sudden chill of vague apprehension. Was Vin- 
cent ill then; or away? Then the words of the 
telegram leapt into her mind, “Come at once.” 
Had they any deeper significance than she had 
thought? Instantly the resolve formed itself in 
her mind. Reach him that night she must and 
would; and, since there was no other way, she 
would walk. 

“Where is the Hotel du Nord?” she asked 
aloud; “that perhaps is in the direction of the 
Ardenza road?” 

Yes, certainly it was, close by the quay. 
Would the signora like a porter to show the way? 

“No,” Paula answered. She preferred to go 
alone. She must walk since there was no carriage. 

Well, she could not miss it. Let her follow 
the tramways line — that would take her straight 
through the town, and they ran past the Hotel 
du Nord. 

“And where do they go to?” inquired Paula. 

“They run straight on all the way to Ardenza, 
a double track,” returned the station-master, 
proud of the resources of his town. “And the 
Signor Halham’s villa lies seven miles beyond 
that,” he continued; “on the same road, and seven 
miles from where the tramway ceases. It is a 


322 


PAULA 


white building. Ah, yes! a beautiful villa.” 

Paula’s heart leapt at the sudden mention of 
the dear name. Ten miles only now between him 
and her. She had all the information now she 
needed for her journey: love would give her the 
strength for it. She thanked the station-master, 
gave some hurried directions as to her luggage, 
and then started from the station, carrying with 
her one light handbag. 

Seven was just striking from the clock of San 
Marco as she stepped from the shelter of the 
station into the frozen stillness of the bitter night. 
It was one of those when the sky seems arched 
overhead at an extraordinary, enormous distance 
from the earth. In it climbed steadily upwards 
the small, cold moon, filling the sky, and bathing 
the whole landscape with its white brilliance. It 
was intensely cold. The snow lay thick upon the 
roofs, and, frosted over its surface, it glistened, 
sparkling in the moon-rays. Thick icicles as 
large as a man’s wrist hung from the edges of 
the tiles ; piles of snow, high as Paula’s shoulders, 
were banked all along the route; but the pave- 
ment had been kept fairly clear, and there, in the 
middle of the roadway, lay the double track of the 
tramways — four rows of steel glittering in the 
moonlight. Paula’s eyes rested gratefully on 
them — they were to lead her to him. 

The ardent glow of love alight in her heart 
seemed to render her physically impervious to and 
unconscious of the deadly cold. She walked on 


PAULA 


323 


swiftly, only anxious as to the time it might take 
her to accomplish the distance. Ten miles ! She 
could do it in two hours. Two hours and she 
would be in his arms. 

She walked along the pavement with quick, 
sure feet, looking all round her with interested 
eyes. She was in an unknown city, in an un- 
known country, and not even the aim of her 
journey could quite eclipse the impersonal, eager, 
curious interest that stirred in her. The great 
snowy piazzas were deserted: the tracks ran 
through them, and Paula followed the line with 
quick feet, her eyes glancing in every direction. 
As she got nearer down towards the port, she saw 
the town was not so frozen and asleep as it seemed 
by the station. Occasionally now a man’s figure, 
in a long coat with a fur collar turned up to the 
eyes and a sealskin cap drawn down to them, met 
and passed her. The eyes peered curiously at her 
through the slit between the two furs, and twice she 
heard the feet stop on the crackling frost, and saw 
the sharp-cut shadow on the snow turn and stand. 
Paula hurried on, almost racing, and her heart 
beating hard. At last the tracks turned into the 
main street, the great Via Vittorio Emanuele that 
runs through the centre of the town clear away 
down to the harbour and the shipping. In any 
weather that is reasonably tolerable this is a high- 
way for a surging crowd of humanity that fluctu- 
ates with the coming in and loading and unload- 
ing of vessels in the port. But now there was but 


324 


PAULA 


a thin sprinkling of figures hurrying through it, 
men only ; there were no women visible anywhere ; 
no vehicles of any sort, no animals, not even a 
dog passed her. Paula looked up curiously at 
the grim black houses that seemed to tower to 
such a tremendous height on each side of the nar- 
row Via. All their ground-floors were shops, and 
these were still open, throwing a blaze of warm, 
homely yellow gas across the moonlit pavement. 
Nearly every other building was a closed cafe. 
All the front of these were glass, with glass swing 
doors in the centre. 

Paula, glancing through the panes as she 
hurried along close to the shops, saw the long 
narrow interiors stretching far back, brilliantly 
lighted, furnished with row upon row of wooden 
benches, and filled with a mob of drinking, smok- 
ing, chattering Italians : the lowest, the roughest, 
and poorest, the dregs of the Livornese populace. 
In one of these cafes she saw a fight commencing, 
and the blade of a knife flashed out from 
one of the yellow fur-trimmed coat sleeves, mak- 
ing a bright curve in the smoke-filled air; the 
door swung open at the minute, and a band of 
sailors poured out; through the swinging doors 
Paula heard the din and the uproar of the angry 
voices within; the panels swung to, and she sped 
on. A man stopped deliberately in front of her. 
She went into the gutter to avoid him, and left 
him standing looking after her. As she stepped 
on to the pavement again she felt in front of her 


PAULA 


325 


, wadded sealskin. Yes, the revolver was there 
safe. ‘‘I may want it, it seems,” she murmured 
to herself with a smile, thinking of the knife that 
had looked keen in the cafe, and would look 
keener still in the moonlight of the country road 
beyond Ardenza. 

On, on, why this street itself must be a mile 
long, she thought impatiently. At last there 
came a scent of sea diffusing itself through the 
frosty air; she drew it in exultantly. She felt she 
must be nearing the harbour. A few moments 
more and she had reached the corner of the long 
street. A white building caught her eye in the 
moonlight, and she read on it “Hotel du Nord.” 
Her heart leapt as she followed the tramways 
that went sweeping round the corner, and saw the 
great dockyard and a maze of ice-bound rigging, 
masts, and disabled hulls before her. 

After she had passed the Hotel du Nord, with 
its cheerful lighted windows, for the first time a 
chill of apprehensive fear came over her. Blank 
and brilliant lay the road before her without a 
single living object, flanked by the huge white 
houses, mostly with windows shuttered up for the 
winter, on the one side, and by the sullen black 
waters of the harbour on the other. It was colder 
here, too, than it had been up in the town, or the 
temperature was sinking rapidly. The utter 
loneliness was more striking after the gaslight 
and sense of human companionship in the street 
she had left. She glanced round; her own figure 


326 


PAULA 


and her own shadow were the only things that 
moved. Still she never hesitated; only hastened 
her steps forward. On before her ever ran the 
glittering steel tracks over the frozen ground. 
Not a sound reached her, not even a lap nor a 
murmur from the black water at her side. On, 
over the Ponte Nuovo and beyond, with the 
low wall of the quay beside her, behind which lay 
the great ghastly silent forms of the ships with 
their frozen ice-bound rigging; on, past the 
dreary gloomy buildings of the huge custom- 
houses ; and then on, on, under an old crumbling 
wall shrouded in ivy that stood high over Paula’s 
head and buried the pathway in dense blackness. 
It seemed to her ages that she had walked by that 
wall. An unknown road has always the peculiar 
attribute of appearing infinitely longer than its 
real mileage, and to Paula each step was abso- 
lutely unknown; she could not have told in the 
least where she was going but for the tramways 
that she kept her eyes on, till they seemed al- 
most to become companions in the journey. 

On the other side of her there was an open 
square, and across the broad-flagged, stone-paved 
roadway beyond rose a straight hne of the six- 
and seven-storied Livornese houses, their pale 
pinky-painted cardboard-looking fronts seeming 
to stare blindly at the floods of moonlight bathing 
them. Every here and there came a break in 
them — the black mouth of some narrow street, a 
street so narrow, with the houses so high on either 


PAULA 


327 


side, that the moonlight could not get down into 
it. Paula’s eyes travelled keenly over all on all 
sides as she walked, but no moving figure ap- 
peared. The solitude and the stillness were in- 
tense. She stepped, after a time, from the op- 
pressive shadow of the wall into the brilliant road : 
the light crackle of the frost under her quick 
footsteps was the only sound. She felt mad with 
impatience to cover the ground faster. Since she 
had once conceived the idea that Vincent was 
possibly ill and in need of her, every moment she 
was away from him seemed to her a crime. At 
times she almost ran. It was only the fear of 
premature exhaustion that checked her and kept 
her pace to a walk. As it was, she must have been 
moving at nearly six miles an hour, and it seemed 
so slow to her, her progress. At last she turned 
the corner of the wall. Now she was in the open 
— on the Livornese sea-front, with the open sea 
on her right hand, and still the high, pinky card- 
board-looking houses on her left. She was now 
in the best quarter of Livorno. Before her un- 
rolled itself the level white road, a true Italian 
noble road; it reminded her of the pictures she 
had seen of the Via Appia. But her heart sank 
for an instant as her eye travelled along it, so 
long, so straight, so implacable! She seemed to 
have walked a great distance already, and yet 
she was still in Livorno! And Livorno must be 
left behind and Ardenza reached, and Ardenza 
left behind, and then seven miles more covered 


328 


PAULA 


before she could reach the Villa. But the flutter 
at her heart only lasted an instant. The next it 
resumed its great quick energetic beats, forcing 
the hot youthful blood rapidly through her veins. 

On, on she walked, and on stretched the bright 
steel tracks. She could see them gleaming far 
ahead of her along the road. After a time the 
houses ceased on her left hand, and desolate, and 
deserted, and shut up though they had been, 
Paula missed them, and shuddered a little as 
she gazed out now on the flat dreary expanse 
of waste country — level frozen fields — that 
stretched away for miles on the other side of the 
road. She kept her eyes on the roadway and the 
tracks, and fell into a reverie as she walked. For 
a long time she hardly raised her gaze from the 
frosty ground, and then suddenly lifting her eyes 
with a start she was face to face with the city 
wall and the huge gate, the barrier of the old 
Italian town. For the first second she felt noth- 
ing but joy. She had reached the edge of the 
city. Then came a chill of terror. Were the 
gates open? She looked over the colossal struc- 
ture as she hurried up to it. It reared itself huge 
and impressive: two solid columns of stone, one 
almost washed by the sluggish waters of the tide- 
less sea, the other half built in the city wall that 
stretched out far across the barren country be- 
yond where the eye could follow it. Beneath 
these columns Paula saw the black iron networks 
of the gates. Almost suffocated by her fears that 


PAULA 


329 


they might be shut, shutting her into the city, she 
came nearer; the middle gate and one small one 
at the side were closed, the other small one, the 
pedestrian gate, stood open. Paula passed 
through it like the wind. Out, out into the open 
country. She took two or three paces forward, 
her heart beating hard with grateful relief, then 
paused one instant and looked back. The solid 
wall, the great columns, gleamed white behind 
her. This was the last of the protection of the 
city. But the bright tracks ran on and on, hope- 
ful and assuring, ever and ever on before her, 
through the icy solitude. She felt no fear. A 
supreme confidence in herself and her powers 
had always been her gift. A fresh gush of life 
and strength seemed to animate her as she started 
forward again. 

For a mile or two the road lies flat and 
monotonous along the sea, and Paula again felt 
her reverie coming over her. The long, mechani- 
cal action of walking, the utter silence and soli- 
tude, the intensity of the cold, and the mesmerism 
of the glittering lines of steel, induced a sort of 
lethargy of thought. A species of drowsiness 
crept across even her excited, eager brain. All at 
once Paula’s eyes missed something. The tracks 
had ceased. The tramway had come to an end. 
She stopped suddenly and looked back. Yes, she 
had passed them now by a few yards. This, then, 
was Ardenza. The village by courtesy. A few 
scattered hovels, mere huts, without a light in any 


330 


PAULA 


one of them, and a large wooden, barn-like build- 
ing, painted in tawdry colours, closed and barred 
now, but in summer calling itself a cafe. The 
road here turned inland, ascending gently, lead- 
ing away from the sea into the desolate waste of 
snow-covered country. She paused a minute and 
stood still, drawing her breath quickly, and feel- 
ing all her pulses beating hard throughout her 
frame. Now she must go on without the tracks 
to guide her. She felt sorry to leave them behind ; 
she was distinctly conscious of a sense of loss as 
she looked back at them. There they lay gleam- 
ing, cold and tranquil, in the moonlight, on the 
white road behind her as they had shone in front. 
Well, their mission was accomplished, her way 
now was clear. There was but that one solitary 
wide road leading out upon the waste. Paula 
realised suddenly she must not stay still. The 
cold pressed, as it were, against her cheek almost 
like the edge of a knife. She saw that her frozen 
breath had formed an ice collar on the fur about 
her neck. With one more grateful glance at the 
glistening tracks she started forward again. 
Even her elastic muscles were stiffening now 
from fatigue and cold. 

She left the village behind, and, with her heart 
beating joyfully, started on the last seven miles. 
She glanced round once or twice, to make sure 
she was not being followed. No; the footsteps 
she fancied from time to time she heard behind 
her, were really only the hammerings of the ex- 


PAULA 


331 


cited blood in her ears. Down the white Ardenza 
road fell the moon-rays, mile after mile, and en- 
countered no moving thing. Away and away 
from the track rolled the low barren hills; and 
far, far off, discernible behind lower ranges 
against the sky, in gigantic, glittering peaks, rose 
the eternal Alps. All around on every side, for 
league upon league, till vision failed, there was 
one monotonous waste of white, and not the 
faintest sound broke the stillness of that huge 
wilderness of snow. The temperature fell lower 
and yet lower. There seemed an unuttered threat 
of Nature against all life in that awful, snowy 
silence. And in defiance of it, the girl pressed 
onward over the frozen track across the vast 
undulating plain, in the teeth of the Arctic night. 


XIX 


Seven ! The delicate chime, in seven silver 
strokes of sound, went through the huge, com- 
fortable room — the drawing-room of the Villa 
Uffizi, seven miles out of Ardenza. As they 
chimed through the stillness, the three men, the 
only occupants of the room, all recognised them 
faintly. The young fellow sitting at the table, 
occupied in rather restlessly turning over the 
leaves of a magazine, looked up at the clock and 
yawned with a disappointed air, as if he had 
thought it was later. The man stretched at full 
length on a couch between the two long windows, 
lowered his book deliberately, and watched the 
face of the clock over his spectacles until it had 
ceased striking. The third man sitting far back 
in a large arm-chair drawn close to the fire, with 
liis hfead averted from the room, closed one list- 
less hand that hung over the chair arm, as if in 
pain, as he heard. 

The clock ceased, each figure relapsed to its 
former attitude, and the silence reigned unbroken 
again, except for the heavy muffled tick of the 
passing seconds. The room, in its hangings and 
finishings and its dark ceiling, was a splendid 
specimen of old Florentine decorative art ; in its 
furniture, its lamps, its carpets, a type of modern 


.PAULA 


838 


luxury. The man at the hearth looked round, 
and the light fell on his face. It was Vincent’s 
face, changed beyond recognition. The deadly 
yellow tint that had formerly been just faintly 
suggested in moments of extreme fatigue, had 
crept all over it, invaded the clear white pallor, 
and spread upwards to the edge of the dark hair. 
The lips were blue and drawn. All the fine 
modelling of the face had grown sharp and 
pinched, and a helpless exhaustion looked out 
of the faded eyes. They gazed now hungrily 
at the man on the sofa. It was an effort to 
gather strength to speak. After a minute the 
gaze seemed to effect Vincent’s object. The man 
looked over the edge of his book, and Vincent 
made a sign to him with one thin yellow hand. 
He rose and crossed over to him. 

“Do you think I shall last, Doctor,” murmured 
Vincent, just audibly, “through — the night?” 

The doctor drew a chair up beside him and 
attempted to assume a cheerful air. “Oh, I hope 
so, I hope so,” he said ; “one never knows in these 
cases. The temperature might go up and give 
you a fresh lease of life.” 

“And if it does not?” The voice was very 
weak, but there was still the old tone of deter- 
mination in it, the wish to hear and face the truth. 

“Well then, we must hope you will still pull 
through it. How’s the pulse?” He took his 
patient’s wrist and felt attentively. “Yes, yes, 
that’s not so bad,” he said. “I am afraid your 


334 


PAULA 


great anxiety is going against you, you know.” 

“Don’t let me keep you and Stanhope from 
your dinner,” said Vincent after a minute. “ J ust 
help me to the couch, and then go.” 

The doctor supported him to the couch, put a 
gong within reach on a table, and then crossed 
the room to where the young fellow sat gloomily 
staring at them. He signed to him, and they both 
went out. Outside he said to Stanhope, ‘T am 
afraid the poor fellow is sinking fast. It will be 
an awful thing to meet the girl when she does 
come. I’m afraid he can’t last, you know.” 

Stanhope walked beside him in gloomy silence. 

“Seems a pity we can’t save him,” went on the 
doctor musingly, “such a good-looking fellow he 
must have been, and with such a charm of man- 
ner. Pity he must slip through for just the want 
of a little extra blood,” and he gazed at his com- 
panion attentively. Stanhope reddened. 

“Well, why don’t you save him then?” he said 
pettishly; “you’re a doctor, I’m not.” 

Alone in the silent room Vincent lay upon the 
couch with closed eyes listening to the remorse- 
less clock that ticked away his last seconds upon 
this earth. If she would only come! that was 
his single thought now. All the powers in his 
brain were focussed on that one sole desire, that 
she might come. It was more than a desire, it 
was a terrible thirst. The thought of her face 
was like the thought of water in fever. 

His thoughts slipped back, weakly, vaguely, 


PAULA 


33 ^ 


over the long lapse of time to that morning after 
she had left him, when he had gathered up the 
thread of his life again for the second time where 
she had broken it. He remembered the repug- 
nance to go back to England, and how he had 
gone on alone instead, back to his old life in Aus- 
tralia, and thrown himself into his work to keep 
off thought. How fortunate he had been, how 
everything he had touched had been successful, 
and how he had worked! and all that time, slowly 
and insidiously, had his disease been creeping 
upon him unnoticed and unchecked. Yes, he saw 
it all now — now that it was too late. Day after 
day spent in those dingy bank offices without sun, 
without air, bending perpetually over documents, 
and working out accounts and writing letters. 
He remembered that growing languor that used 
to beset him, that sense of exhaustion after the 
least effort, the constant feeling of tiredness even 
without effort. 

Then his thoughts passed on rapidly over those 
monotonous weeks to the tour one spring with his 
friend Stanhope, a tour through Italy, and he re- 
membered how delightfully his health had been 
given back to him in the summer warmth, how he 
had thought there was a charm in the Italian air ; 
how at the beginning of the winter, when the cold 
had seized him and brought back his illness, the 
Paris specialist had suggested Italy as the one 
place in the world to winter in, where the warm 
sunlight and pure air from the Alps would re- 


336 


PAULA 


cuperate his impoverished blood. He recalled 
how Stanhope had persuaded him to take the 
villa for the winter, how they had both thought 
this oliye-covered sunny slope Ijdng south was 
safe from the touch of winter. He remembered 
their disillusion in the earlier months, and their 
hesitation as to whether they should stay, and then 
the sudden and awful descent of the winter upon 
them — the ice-bound roads, the snow banked high 
to the hedges, the freezing wind coming down, like 
the blade of a knife, from the mountains. 

Then had come his sudden sense that his hold 
on life was over: the cold ate into his system, 
where the current was running weaker and weak- 
er in his veins, and Stanhope had started for 
Florence to bring back the best doctor there to 
see him. 

Just three weeks ago that had been when his 
friend came back with the great man, who had 
only been passing through the city, and whom 
Stanhope, by urgent entreaty, had persuaded to 
visit the solitary dying man, imprisoned in this 
splendid villa on the lonely Ardenza slopes. 

J ust three weeks ago that he had been told he 
must die. And since then it had been a calm and 
terrible waiting for the end. The slowness of the 
disease made it like a gradual dissolution, a dis- 
integration almost, before death. Day by day, 
hour by hour, in that fearful cold where the tem- 
perature was sinking daily, his force diminished, 
his blood ran slower, very gradually the whole 


PAULA 


337 


machinery of his frame was ceasing to work from 
want of the vital fluid, as a clock’s machinery 
from want of oil. And now it seemed long 
to to-morrow morning. To-morrow morning 
seemed far away. If she would only come. 

Eight I The clock struck softly: eight strokes, 
and then the silence closed as it were again over 
the sound, and seemed doubly profound. Vin- 
cent strained his ears. Not a sound within the 
room, not a sound without the long windows. 
How he yearned and longed, how each fibre in 
his brain ached to hear a clatter of wheels, or a 
light step, or the crackle of the frosted snow from 
the outside; but there was nothing, only an iron, 
implacable silence. He watched the clock, its 
long hand had moved to the ten minutes past the 
hour. He drew out slowly with weak fingers two 
flimsy sheets of paper from his breast pocket. 
They were her telegrams, her first of a week ago, 
and her last dated from Genoa. He held them 
up now before his eyes and followed the written 
words, though he knew them by heart: “Am 
coming as quickly as possible, but lines are 
blocked and trains uncertain. — Paula.” 

There was just the faint shadow of a smile 
upon his face as his nerveless hand fell again to 
his side. Yes, she would come as quickly as she 
could, her whole temperament was stamped in 
that one line; but when, when would she be here? 
He looked at the clock, the slow hand had reached 
the quarter. If she would only come ! It seemed 


338 


PAULA 


as if the mere longing for her would have strength 
to hold him to life until she came. How clearly 
he saw her face, how it stood out vivid and 
brilliant against the background of the years they 
had been parted ! If he could feel her warm arms 
round him, be wrapped round in her wonderful 
vitality! His own dying nature seemed to leap 
up within him, his pulses hurried feebly, he raised 
himself a little from the couch, the beat of his 
heart seemed to stifle him. What was that? 
There seemed the crunch, just a little faint 
crunch of snow outside. He listened intently, but 
no, there was no further sound. Tick, tick, tick, 
perpetually, and the faint breathing of the stove, 
otherwise silence as relentless, as implacable, as 
his own approaching death. 

There seemed a curious tightness across his 
chest, his breathing seemed becoming more diffi- 
cult. He felt it, and could divine its meaning. 
He was dying then, and she was not here, she 
would not be in time. He fell back into his old 
position, a cold sweat gathering in the palms of 
his hands. It was to be then. He would not see 
her, could never recall those last words of his to 
her that had lain like an iron searing his con- 
science, never hear that she had forgiven him. 

He hardly thought of his own death. Since 
that first terrible moment when he had heard his 
fate, since those few awful minutes of despair 
when he had realised that he must relinquish his 
life, since the first inevitable madness of regret 


PAULA 


339 


had swept over him, that it had to be relinquished 
not for any great aim or object, or any over- 
whelming necessity, but merely through the piti- 
ful chance that had led him to a climate fatally 
cold — since the first great revolt, he had sum- 
moned all his resolution, all the calmness with 
which he had faced life, and, wrapped round in 
it as in a mantle, he awaited death almost un- 
moved. 

Only the one desire, that clung to him with a 
mad, resistless force, remained — to have her 
within his arms again. He could not free his 
brain from its violent obsession. The longing 
had sprung to life at her first telegram. To him, 
resigned, prepared for the inevitable, and await- 
ing it in this solitary snowy isolation, half-way 
within the grey shadow of the tomb, her message 
had come, winging its way suddenly from the 
very throbbing centre of that life, now so far 
away. And suddenly from beneath the weight 
of oblivion he had tried so hard to heap upon it, 
her young figure sprang up, fresh, vivid, smiling, 
forbidding him to descend farther into the 
shadow, calling him back to the sunlight. And 
though he could not believe hers could save his, 
yet the thought of her life, of her form, that was 
youth and health incarnate, came to him with an 
inexpressible, infinite sweetness. 

Oh, to see that white neck once more, the red 
lips parting in smile upon smile; to press the 
warm heart to his; to feel her wealth of inex- 


340 


PAULA 


haustible love enfolding him once more! After 
all and through all, and though she had made 
him suffer, yet she had loved him as no other 
woman had, and it was to her image that he 
turned now. Of all the other hands that had 
caressed, of all the other hps that had kissed, 
there were none he thought of nor wished for 
now. Of all the women that had been pleasant 
to live with, it was this one woman alone in whose 
arms he felt it would be no pain to die. 

Nine! The clock struck again. Vincent tore 
open his eyes and looked at it. Could it be so 
late? Another hour had gone, but she had not 
come. An hour, another hour of strength and 
life taken from him, an hour cut from the period 
he could hold out waiting. Again that stifling 
tightness of his chest! He looked round. He 
was alone still! Why did they not come hack? 
He must have stimulants to keep this faint- 
ness at bay. He reached his hand to the gong on 
the table beside him and struck it. Its sharp 
silver note rang like a cry through the stillness. 
The doctor and his companion came into the room 
almost before the sound had died away, with a 
look of expectancy and alarm stamped on their 
faces — the doctor’s sober and chill with anxiety, 
the young fellow’s flushed, as if he had been 
drinking. 

‘T feel worse,” gasped Vincent. “Your tonic! 
anything to give me an hour or two longer !” His 
voice sank to a whisper. His face was grey. The 


PAULA 


34il 


doctor rushed to his side with a wine-glass half- 
filled with a white liquid. Vincent drank it, and 
grasped the other’s wrist. ‘‘She must be here 
. . . soon . . . now,” he said eagerly; “If you 
can keep me two hours.” 

“Yes, oh yes; many hours yet, I hope, and she 
is due now — she must be here soon,” responded 
the doctor. 

“Tell me . . . I . . . can’t last beyond mid- 
night; can I, now?” 

The doctor bent over him and felt in the region 
of the heart, and remained silent. 

“Well, I know it,” Vincent said faintly. “Call 
Stanhope.” The doctor signed to the young fel- 
low to come up. 

“When did you say the train — the last — came 
in?” he asked. 

Stanhope flushed and hesitated, and then stam- 
mered painfully, “It was ... I believe ... its 
usual time is 6.30.” 

“And did you order the carriage to meet it?” 
The doctor had his arm beneath Vincent’s head. 
From out of the pale drawn face the fixed eyes 
blazed steadily upon Stanhope’s nervous counte- 
nance. 

“Look here, Vincent,” he said desperately; 
“I’m awfully sorry, but — but the man wouldn’t 
take his horse out, nor go himself. You don’t 
know what the cold is like outside. He said it 
meant nothing less than freezing to death as one 
sat and drove; and the roads too, it’s just like one 


342 


PAULA 


arched sheet of glass. No horse could keep his 
footing on it. The men can only walk along the 
sides. I bribed him, I threatened — I tried to get 
another man, but — ^but — Vincent! don’t look like 
that. In the morning perhaps ” 

His voice died away inarticulate. Vincent’s 
head slipped from the doctor’s arm and fell 
heavily back upon the couch. She would not get 
here, then, to-night! It was hopeless. The sweat 
burst out again cold upon him in his agony of 
helpless longing. The doctor motioned Stanhope 
roughly away. 

“She may find a carriage in the town,” he said 
with infinite sympathy. “Of course the roads are 
bad, and that accounts for her delay ; she is prob- 
ably on her way up now.” 

The still figure on the couch made no response 
this time, and the doctor moved down the long 
room. 

“You may think you’ve killed him,” he said in 
a fierce whisper to Stanhope, who was leaning 
now against the corner of the mantelpiece, with 
one hand thrust into his pocket and looking aim- 
lessly at the clock. It marked the half-hour after 

nine. He turned. “Well, I- There was a 

slight clamour in the passage, the sound of the 
clacking of the loose Italian shoes of the servant 
on the stone fioor, and then the door was opened. 

Paula, wrapped in her furs that sparkled with 
hoar frost, stood on the threshold, glowing, splen- 
did, superb in her wealth of life and vitality. 


PAULA 


343 


The fearful cold outside, the quick long walk of 
her young elastic feet, the ardent excitement 
within her, — all these had painted an exquisite 
flush on her wild-rose skin, her eyes were limpid 
with light, the lamp ray gleamed on her vermilion 
lips all trembling into smiles. 

Both the men nearest the door turned with an 
exclamation. She did not see them. Before 
either could advance or Vincent could move, she 
had traversed the space between them and was on 
her knees beside him, her arms were round him, 
her velvet lips on his, pressed there in a silent 
madness as in the old past days. It was a mo- 
ment of delirium, of joy, in which years of sorrow 
were swallowed up, cancelled, given over to ob- 
livion. 

‘‘You forgive me now?” she murmured, and the 
warm rose-like breath was drawn into the dying 
man's gasping frame, and seemed to animate it. 
“Darhng! forgive me.” 

The two Englishmen by common consent, 
moved by instinctive delicacy, had gone over to 
the door and passed through it, closing it softly 
after them. Now they strolled mechanically 
down the passage, dimly lighted by the square 
hanging lamps. 

“She's just turned up in time,” remarked the 
younger laconically. 

“Yes. What a splendid creature!” returned 
the doctor with musing enthusiasm. “There's 
life, there's blood!” 


344 


PAULA 


The young man glanced at him. ‘‘Still hag- 
gling over your old idea, Doctor?’’ he said with 
a nervous laugh. “When will their transports be 
over, I wonder. It’s beastly cold out here.” 

He was not heartless. On the contrary, the 
slow approach of his friend’s death weighed with 
a dull horror upon him, and this affectation of 
boredom, this flippancy, was his British way of 
showing it. As he spoke, flying steps came down 
the passage behind them. Both the men turned 
and came face to face with Paula, the radiant, 
brilliant incarnation of life, health, and woman- 
hood, in the grim grey stone passage with the 
lamplight falling on her through the ruby squares 
of its glass. 

“What is the matter with him?” she asked, 
and her eyes looked from one to the other in 
piteous entreaty. “What has happened? He is 
dying!” 

The agony in the voice that seemed to All the 
whole passage with its music, made the doctor 
colour nervously. He plunged both hands deep 
down in the pockets of his loose coat, and looked 
at her above his spectacles. “Has he told you?” 

“Told me!” repeated Paula. “I can see it. 
What is it?” Her heart seemed beating itself to 
death in agony, a mad desperation ran through 
her, like a barbed wire being pushed cruelly along 
her veins. 

“Very obscure,” muttered the doctor; “long- 
standing miscliief, accelerated by this cold.” 


PAULA 


345 


‘‘The name, the name of the disease?” said 
Paula, impatiently. She stood in front of him: 
there seemed a menace in her blazing, dilated 
eyes. 

“Well really, it is difficult to classify these con- 
stitutional inorganic diseases; it seems to be a 
phase of pernicious ansemia.” 

“An-2emia,” repeated Paula, raising her eye- 
brows. “Want of blood; well, here is blood,” she 
said suddenly, holding out both hands with their 
rosy glow at each finger tip. “Take mine and 
put it into him. You can do it, I know. What’s 
that operation? Intravenous injeetion, trans- 
fusion of blood: transfuse mine, will you?” 

The colour, momentarily driven from her faee, 
had rushed back to it again. Her eyes were 
alight, her bps parted in eager questioning. Both 
men stared at her in silence for a few seconds. 
Stanhope was the first to recover himself. “Now 
Doctor, there’s your chance,” he said, with his 
nervous little laugh. 

“What do you know of transfusion, eh?” said 
the doctor after a minute, half derisively. 

“Nothing, except that there is such an opera- 
tion,” answered Paula. “You must know all 
about it,” she added, her habit of flattery to 
all men coming to her aid, “being a doctor. 
Wouldn’t it answer here?” She waited, her 
whole life seeming to hang upon his answer. 

“I think it might,” he answered slowly. 

“Then do it, oh! do it,” she said, seizing his 


346 


PAULA 


hand. "‘There’s not a moment to be lost. He 
seems to me sinking, dying; and he shall not die.” 
The glorious blasphemy hardly seemed one from 
such lips. It seemed as if she could give away 
life from her superabundance. “Can we manage 
it? Can you do it?” she pursued, holding the 
doctor’s limp hand hard in hers, as if she could 
transfer some of her fervour to his phlegmatic 
frame. 

“I will do my best,” he said. “Certainly, if you 
and he wish it.” Paula raised his hand to her lips. 

“Save him, only save him,” she said; “you will, 
you must.” 

The doctor withdrew his hand hurriedly, but 
some of her enthusiasm was imparted to him al- 
ready. “I’ll go and speak to him about it,” he 
said. 

“Only, not a word of the risk to me,” answered 
Paula. 

The doctor hesitated. “I can’t deny facts,” he 
said stiffly. 

Paula stretched out her arms each side and 
stood in front of him, barring the passage. 
Something in her attitude struck a chord of mem- 
ory in the doctor’s brain. 

“Why, you’re the great dancer surely!” he 
ejaculated in sudden astonishment. 

“Say the dancer,” returned Paula, with a 
melancholy smile. 

“The great dancer,” reiterated the doctor; “I 
thought I knew the voice! Well, Mrs. Reeves, it 


PAULA 


34T 


seems a sin to experiment with a life like yours.” 

Paula wrung her hands impatiently. “We’re 
wasting time. What do I matter? Cut me, kill me, 
take all the blood I’ve got, only not one word to 
him. He will never consent if you breathe a 
syllable about the risk.” 

The doctor stood irresolute. His brain rather 
rocked with one emotion after another being 
thrown into it in this way. Stanhope stood look- 
ing on, a fascinated silent beholder of a devotion, 
a love, he could not realise, nor even faintly grasp. 

“Do go to him, dearest doctor, do, and if he 
asks about the danger, lie to him, do, for my 
sake.” She still stood in front of him with out- 
stretched arms and shining eyes, tremulous with 
excitement, in an agony of fear and anxiety for 
the life that was slipping silently away while they 
talked. 

“Very good, if you really wish it,” returned the 
doctor, moved unconsciously by the force of her 
intensity. “Come, Stanhope, I want you there as 
a witness to what passes.” The two men went 
back towards the drawing-room. Paula, left 
alone in the grey corridor, walked up and down 
feverishly. Hours seemed to elapse, and then 
Stanhope came back alone. 

“He has consented; he’s so weak he hardly 
understands what we want, but he keeps asking 
for you,” he said. “Would you like Angela to 
show you your room, while I get him to bed? Dr. 
Greenwood says he’ll do it at once, if you like.” 


348 


PAULA 


‘‘Oh, I am so glad,” she answered with a sigh 
of intense relief, and Stanhope looked at her curi- 
ously. “Tell Dr. Greenwood I am ready when- 
ever he is.” 

The old Italian woman, Angela, was following 
him, and as Stanhope went back to the drawing- 
room, Paula went up to the room that had been 
prepared for her. It was brilliant with the light 
of fire and lamps, full of a warm red glow. Be- 
yond the long glistening panes of the window, 
the blind of which was still undrawn, shimmered 
the moonlight; it fell athwart the window, not 
entering the room. Paula stood for a moment in 
the centre of the firelit space looking out with 
fixed mechanical eyes. How strange life was, 
and how suddenly a climax or a crisis was upon 
one! How she had longed and hoped that she 
might one day be free, and now she was so! All 
the old obstacles were removed and no new ones 
had intervened. None of the things she had 
feared had happened. His passion had not died 
nor been transferred. She was with him again as 
in the old days, and now suddenly a life was 
demanded by Fate, and that life seemingly was 
to be hers. 

This is how our prayers are always answered; 
this is how our wishes are sent down to us, like 
parcels hurried off by a careless postmaster, some 
misdirected, some badly tied together, some in 
boxes too small for them, all broken, cracked or 
spoiled, left at the wrong destination or delivered 


PAULA 


349 


too late. As a girl she had prayed for the recog- 
nition of her art. It had been sent packed in a 
cramping marriage, and the delicate living flower 
killed. Now she had prayed for happiness, it had 
been duly despatched to her under the black seal 
of death. An ironical smile curved her lips. An 
arrogant light came into her eyes. Well, she 
would accept. Accept: the great grand rule of 
life that makes us tranquil gods of our own lives ; 
over even that necessity that governs the gods 
themselves. 

A knock came at the door. 

“Come in,” responded Paula, and the doctor 
entered. He came up to the hearth. 

“I feel I ought to tell you,” he began hesitat- 
ingly, “to warn you seriously, it may cost you 
your life.” 

“I know that,” replied Paula, smiling. Her 
eyes were liquid with laughter, smile after smile 
chased each other over the curving lips, the little 
white nostril dilated and quivered, her bosom 
heaved joyously. 

“And it may cause you intense pain.” 

“I am glad of that,” she returned simply. 

The doctor stared. Had he to deal with a 
maniac? Intense enthusiasm has always a touch 
of madness to the eyes of common sense. It is 
akin, certainly, if not to madness, at least to 
delirium. “I don’t understand,” he stammered. 
She was surprised in hex turn. It was the alpha- 
bet of the emotions to her. 


350 


PAULA 


“Don’t you understand what it is to suffer for 
a person you care about?” she said, raising her 
eyebrows tranquilly. “That’s not pain — ^it’s de- 
light. Bring in your case of instruments,” she 
added; “I want to see them.” 

The doctor disappeared, and returned with a 
flat black case. Paula took it and opened it on 
the rug in the firelight, and examined its contents 
with glowing eyes, as a young girl might a case of 
jewels. 

“What are these?” she said, lifting some 
little silver tubes from their velvet compart- 
ment. 

“Those are the cannulae for inserting into the 
veins; that’s the trocar, and that’s the scalpel,” 
returned the doctor, bending over her and touch- 
ing each thing with his finger as he spoke, “And 
that’s the connecting tubing, and ” 

“Doctor, are you ready?” came Stanhope’s 
voice from the foot of the stone staircase. 

The doctor glanced at Paula. She nodded. 
“We’re coming,” returned the doctor, shutting 
his case. 

Paula rose, and they went out together. The 
room beneath was brilliant and well warmed : two 
large stoves, with doors set wide open, sent out 
gushes of fierce heat and red light; the window 
was invisible behind heavy velvet curtains. 
Paula’s eyes flashed instantly to the bed. Vin- 
cent lay there, pallid, impassive, seemingly un- 
conscious. Stanhope stood beside it, nervously 


PAULA 


351 


yawning and raising his hand to his mouth each 
second. 

“Sit down there,” said the doctor imperatively 
to Paula. “Take off your bodice . . . have you 
any tight stays on? — No? nothing tight? that’s 
right; then wait till I call you.” 

Paula took the chair, and unfastened her 
bodice. She drew it off, that she might be 
quite ready. Stanhope turned a little so that 
he could not see her. But Paula was not 
thinking of him. The tension of her feelings 
was too high for her to think of embarrassment. 
She sat bare-necked and bare-armed obediently 
waiting. 

“Now, Mrs. Reeves,” called the doctor, and 
Paula got up and walked over to the bed. Vin- 
cent lay, with closed eyes, on his back, his head 
and shoulders very slightly raised, his right arm 
outstretched and bare, supported on a pillow, 
bandaged above the elbow, and with the poor, 
pale vein picked up in it, and the cannula fixed 
in position. Stanhope, with the perspiration on 
his forehead, held it in his not too steady fingers. 
The doctor helped her on to the bed, and she sank 
down beside him, and stretched herself out gently 
as she was told, each limb thrilling and tremulous 
with emotion. Vincent had moved a little, with 
assistance, to give her the necessary space, and 
now turned his head towards her and looked at 
her with the old smile of his days of health ; her 
eyes flashed back upon him, full of her passionate, 


352 


PAULA 


overwhelming love, as she laid her head back on 
the pillow arranged for her. 

“Are you sure it won’t hurt you, darhng?” he 
asked in a far-olf tone. 

“Quite,” she answered, and her ^"oice sounded 
like a laugh of glad, confident triumph: it was the 
first, the only lie, that had ever crossed her lips 
to him. 

The doctor leant over them and raised her 
arm; it was glowing and tremulous — ^her whole 
body glowed and quivered with the infusion of 
the same strange enthusiasm that had flowed 
through her on the birth-night of her art; then 
she was stepping forward to a new life; now 
again she was on a threshold, perhaps of a new 
life, or only of the grave? All her body was 
pulsating wildly, the blood flowed along in ardent 
impetuous waves, her heart beat hard beneath 
the smooth firm breast as a caught dove pants 
wildly beneath the net. The doctor, feeling the 
trembling, palpitating movement of her whole 
frame beneath his hands, bent down and looked 
close into her eyes. “Are you afraid? Do you 
feel any fear?” 

“Not a bit; I am only delighted — ^too happy.” 
Her eyes met his, they had the glow and the flame 
of one entirely borne away by mental exaltation 
from the sphere of bodily suffering. 

“Give me your arm then.” He took her soft 
snowy left arm and twisted a bandage tightly 
round it above the elbow, the flesh below swelled 


PAULA 


853 


and flushed, and the vein in the hollow of the 
elbow rose in a beautiful dark blue cord. Stan- 
hope saw it rise, and felt a sick nausea coming 
over him as he realised it was to be cut. Vincent’s 
eyes were closed, life was at its lowest ebb, he was 
almost pulseless, hardly conscious. As the vein 
swelled and the doctor commenced to lay it bare, 
a tremor of agony went over the girl’s face. 
Stanhope saw it, and the doctor saw it — each 
second they expected a scream from the whiten- 
ing lips. The doctor muttered something about 
it being the most painful part, and Stanhope 
sickened violently, and felt ready to scream 
himself. 

Paula’s eyes met theirs. They had a mock- 
ing smile in them, though the lips quivered with 
exquisite pain. “Don’t hurry,” she said, and her 
voice was quite natural; “I like it.” 

Stanhope felt a throb of admiration for her 
marvellous self-command. The doctor hardly 
heard. “Quite still, please,” he muttered, and 
with a dexterous movement exposed the vein, 
passed the needle beneath it, ^t it, and slipped in 
the cannula, and the torrent of her blood racing 
down from her beating heart pulsed along the 
tubing, blazing with the passions of life, and 
gushed vital and life-giving into the veins of the 
dying man beside her. 

Paula smiled as she felt the sudden quick drain 
upon her system; a sweet tremulous light seemed 
to play over her face as second followed second. 


354 


PAULA 


and the waves of life coursed from her to him. 
At last she was atoning, at last she was serving 
him! She saw Stanhope’s eyes fixed in a sort of 
wonder on her face, and smiled at him — a smile 
that he never forgot. It was supernatural in its 
happiness and triumph. The rapture of those 
few moments! The gods had been good to her 
at last ! As the stream of her young blood poured 
steadily along his veins, a gradual change, subtle 
and barely perceptible at first, came over the 
grey-hued face on the pillow: faint colour began 
to glow softly in the sunken cheeks and quiver in 
the pale lips; the eyelids moved, rose, then fell, 
then rose again as the dawn of new life shone in 
the faded eyes. And as the vital stream passed 
from one to the other, her life sank as his rose. 
She grew \dsibly paler, her lids shut heavily, the 
bosom lifted and fell but very slightly, the crim- 
son of the mouth grew white, all animation fled, 
leaving still the beatific smile, the smile of ecstasy 
on the marble lips. 

At last the doctor, whose gaze had been prin- 
cipally fixed on Vincent’s face, and who was 
noting the new daWn of life with rapt profes- 
sional eyes, saw the increasing pallor of the girl, 
and knew he must end the operation. The next 
few seconds were anxious ones. Stanhope saw 
the doctor’s face grow pale with anxiety, and 
noted dimly at the time, to remember clearly 
afterwards, with how much greater care he 
attended to Vincent’s arm than to the girl’s. 


PAULA 


355 


‘‘Take enough,” she murmured, raising her lids 
with a faint smile as she was being moved. 

“I’m only afraid weVe taken too much,” mut- 
tered the doctor inaudibly, and he stooped over 
her and lifted her, now languid and inert, up 
from the bed; her head fell backward over his 
arm, and the eyes strained back to look at Vin- 
cent. She hated being taken from him. It had 
been so unutterably sweet lying there beside him, 
giving away her life to him; and now it was over, 
broken off as an unfinished dream. 

Vincent’s eyes opened as the doctor took her 
from his side. “Let her stay,” he said, and his 
voice was clear and steady, the tints of his face 
were warm and glowing. The hot youthful cur- 
rent circulated through him, diffusing vigour in 
the awakening brain. He stretched out his un- 
bandaged arm. 

“No, no, damn it, sir,” returned the doctor, 
delighted and elated beyond measure at the suc- 
cess of his work, and affecting a good-humoured 
testiness. “I haven’t taken all these pains and 
saved your life, for you to risk it by working 
yourself into a fever.” 

Paula, lying collapsed and helpless in the doc- 
tor’s arms, still looked at Vincent with eyes wide 
with pain and excitement, as she was carried 
away to a mattress at the farther corner of the 
room. She sank on it limply from the doctor’s 
arms, and lay pallid and nerveless. 

Stanhope stood at the foot-rail of the bed, 


356 


PAULA 


looking from one to the other with fascinated 
eyes. The transformation was complete. Life 
had been transferred — literally taken from the 
one and given to the other. He felt as if he had 
been transported back into the Middle Ages, and 
was witnessing some weird mediaeval piece of 
sorcery. He came up to the bed. 

“Well, old man, how do you feel now?” 

Vincent looked up with kindling eyes and 
warm lips, his whole frame seemed expanding 
with the new life poured into him. 

“Marvellous, isn’t it? I feel well, as I have not 
done for years; but I’m so anxious about her. 
Ted, do make them look after her.” 

The doctor came up to them. “Now, now,” he 
said sharply, “no talking, or we shall have you in 
a fever. You must lie still and keep quiet, or all 
Mrs. Reeves has done for you will be in vain.” 
He waved Stanhope away from the bed. Vin- 
cent’s eyes followed him with an imploring look. 
Stanhope nodded reassuringly as he moved over 
to the other mattress. 

The doctor had called in the old Italian serv- 
ing woman. She sat now with Paula’s head on 
her knees, pouring teaspoonfuls of beef -tea down 
her throat, and muttering Ah! Poverina/^ as not 
the faintest warmth or colour in the dead-hued 
face indicated a response. 

Vincent, who could not see her now as he lay, 
looked at the doctor. “Are you sure she’s in no 
danger?” he asked. 


PAULA 


357 


“Yes, I’m quite sure,” returned the doctor im- 
patiently. “I’ll have her carried out of the room 
and upstairs, if you don’t compose yourself and 
lie still.” 

Under this threat Vincent said no more, and 
the doctor, seeing his eyes close quietly, passed 
on into an adjoining room to give some orders. 
But Vincent’s pulses were beating hard, the girl’s 
quick blood was circulating through him, feeding 
the wasted tissues, and quickening the exhausted 
brain. Thoughts flew rapidly through his mind, 
like sparks driven through the air from the anvil. 
Sweet, tender, grateful feelings swelled and rose 
in him one upon the other, like wave upon wave. 
As the body slowly gathered strength from the 
impetuous life-stream, its appetite for life came 
back, and with this the rapturous mental joy in 
it. The delight and the joy of coming back to it, 
the joy of the woman whose life now beat in his, 
the joy of their future they would spend together, 
and the mere animal joy of feeling the warmth 
and the richness of Being, and all its powers, once 
more flooding his veins! An overwhelming, un- 
speakable tenderness welled up in him, sending 
the hot moisture into his eyes, as he thought of 
the girl who had come to him like this, with the 
great gift in her open hands. An uncontrollable 
impulse urged him, and he sat up erect, with out- 
stretched arms. 

“Darling, come to me!” His voice vibrated 
with ineffable longing. Paula, lying mute and 


358 


PAULA 


inert upon the mattress at the far end of the room, 
quivered, and staggered, pale and uncertain, to 
her feet. 

Stanhope rushed forward to support her, but 
she had already tottered blindly over towards the 
bed. Another second and her head was pressed 
against his breast, where his heart beat strongly. 

“How can I thank you? my darling! my dear 
little love!” 

She looked up and saw the life that had been 
hers in his face, it looked back at her from the 
glowing eyes. She saw his lips were red, it was 
her blood that was flowing there. He would live 
now, the gods had written their promise across 
his face. They had been infinitely good to her! 

“It is my gift to you,” she murmured ; “it has 
been such an exquisite, infinite pleasure to me to 
give it.” 

The doctor entered through the other room, 
bringing in stimulants for the patient. He was 
furious. “I can’t trust you, evidently,” he said 
roughly. “She shall go out of the room, that’s 
all.” He took the girl’s unbandaged arm and 
right shoulder and drew her forcibly away from 
Vincent’s longing grasp. He was deaf to every 
argument, and simply lifted her up bodily and 
carried her to the door. 

“May I see her in the morning?” Vincent 
asked, restlessly following the nerveless figure 
with burning eyes. 

“Yes, to-morrow,” returned the doctor; and 


PAULA 


359 


Paula heard with a faint shadow of a smile; — for 
her she felt there was no to-morrow. 

The doctor signed to the old woman to follow 
him and marched upstairs with Paula to the room 
above. The shock of icy air from the outside 
passages was great, and Paula shivered in his 
arms and lay quite motionless. The room up- 
stairs was perfectly warm, as warm as Vincent’s 
own, and when they reached it she seemed to 
revive a little. The doctor carried her over to 
the hot circle of firelight round the stove, and she 
seemed able to stand upright, and volunteered 
that she could undress without assistance. The 
doctor brought forward her bag, and began, with 
a woman’s gentleness, getting out the few little 
things she had brought with her. Presently a 
weak cry brought him over to her side again. 
Paula had slipped off her skirt, but the string of 
her petticoat had caught and drawn into a knot, 
her quivering fingers pulled at it in vain, her face 
was colourless. “I can’t,” she said, helplessly 
turning her wide eyes upon him. She was tremb- 
ling all over, and tottered as she stood. The 
doctor supported her, and cut the string with his 
penknife. She clung to his arm. ‘T shall die! 
I shall die!” she exclaimed half -unconsciously. 
All her instincts told her she was dying. 

“No, no, I believe not,” he answered firmly, 
and struck the gong. Angela came up in re- 
sponse, bringing a tray of stimulants and the 
unfinished beef-tea. With the aid of these and 


360 


PAULA 


Paula’s own will, that had not left her yet, the 
doctor and the old woman between them suc- 
ceeded in getting her into bed. To Paula, as she 
lay back in it, there seemed no bed, only space 
through which she was sinking, sinking. 

The doctor, supporting her head, kept alter- 
nating the food and wine, until Paula turned 
from the glass. ‘T can’t take any more, let me 
rest a little.” She turned towards the well, feel- 
ing only an infinite longing for sleep. The doc- 
tor sat beside her frowning deeply in his anxious 
meditation. He could hardly understand this 
collapse; he had often performed the operation 
before, and in no case had he lost a fife. 

“I thought you would spare it easily,” he mut- 
tered half aloud at last; “how is it?” 

“I was very tired when I came,” murmured the 
weak voice from the bed. 

“Ah, yes! how did you get here? Stanhope 
told me there were no means of any sort.” 

“No, but I walked.” 

“Good God!” There was a long silence after 
that single startled exclamation. The doctor’s 
face had grown as white as his patient’s; then 
after a long time he added, “If I had known 
that!” 

Paula turned her head towards him again. 
“Perhaps you mightn’t have done it?” she said 
with a little smile. “I am so glad you didn’t 
know. If anything should happen,” she added, 
“be sure to tell Vincent that I did not regret it; 


PAULA 


361 


that I was only too happy, too delighted; that 
nothing could have made me happier than this. 
Do tell him, won’t you? — ^you won’t forget.” 

“No, no,” interrupted the doctor, “I would tell 
him. But you mustn’t think of such things ; you 
feel weak, but I am sure there is very little 
danger.” 

“You are certain he will live,” asked Paula, 
anxiously; “there will be no relapse? he will be 
cured, will he not?” 

“Cured is hardly the word,” he answered. 
“The new blood has helped him over the crisis, 
saved his life certainly. The effect will last till 
the weather breaks up. Then you must get him 
into Egypt, out of this cold. In a warmer climate 
his system will soon right itself after this tre- 
mendous impetus given it.” 

There was a faint sigh only in response. 
Egypt! How the word stirred her thoughts! 
Once before they had been on their way to Egypt! 
and now again there was a question of Egypt. 
No one would stop them now. But it was too 
late. He would go alone, and she must stay be- 
hind in a little grave on the lonely Ardenza slope. 

“Is it well to leave him, doctor?” she asked, 
after a moment’s silence. “Don’t let me take you 
from him.” 

The doctor looked closely at her. “Well, I 
think you’ll do now for a time. I shall leave you 
Angela, and be up again myself presently,” and 
he went down to the restless patient below. 


362 


PAULA 


Paula, left alone, sank back upon her pillow, and 
her eyes wandered slowly round the great room. 

What a splendid room it was, how large and 
handsome! and it had evidently been prepared 
with care for her. Her eyes filled slowly with 
cold weak tears as she noted tenderly and grate- 
fully the little table thoroughly equipped with 
writing materials, the easy-chair and couch sup- 
plied with new cushions, the pale blue draping 
of the bed evidently quite new, and the blue cur- 
tains over which the red light from the stove 
played merrily. How good he had always been 
to her, always so kind and considerate! 

And in this room, ah! what happiness they 
might have known! Here in this solitary ice- 
bound villa, shut away from the harrowing pester- 
ing world, forgotten for a time, alone in this 
oasis of comfort, in the wilderness of snow. 

If it might have been! The tears gathered 
slowly, very slowly, and fell one by one on the 
pillow. Still a faint wonder possessed her that 
she did not feel more. The old fierce, leaping 
passion, the wild, demanding longing was gone, 
even her love for Vincent seemed feeble within 
her. 

Had she been put back at the Livorno station 
now, she felt with wonder she would not attempt 
the walk again. The splendid impetus, the 
strong desire, which makes all things possible, 
was not with her now, and she felt a sudden 
humiliation. Had all these then been drained 


PAULA 


i363 


from her with her blood? Did that bright life- 
stream carry all that was of worth in her, all 
her love and courage and endurance, all her pas- 
sion, on its tide? Was there nothing then but 
this? 

Then suddenly there stole back to her brain 
the memory of the little smoke-filled room in 
Lisle Street, and she saw herself again l5dng on 
the shabby horse-hair couch on the evening after 
Vincent had paid her the first visit. It all came 
back to her, and suddenly his own warning, that 
it was necessary to understand the powers and 
laws of one’s being. Ah ! if she had but listened, 
but understood then, how different her life might 
have been! Had she but understood when he 
had told her once so gently that the duty of the 
human being is not to fight against and rebel 
against Nature, but to obey her; to try and under- 
stand her commands, and follow them, not to 
presume to dictate terms to a deity. 

Now that she lay there dying, bloodless, help- 
less, will-less, she understood at last the terrible 
power of the body. How much wiser he had been, 
with his simple direct male knowledge of the 
common laws of life, than herself, with all her 
stores of wide theoretical learning ; her mad idola- 
try of the intellect, and of her art; the chimeras, 
the wandering fires that dance so delusively over 
the swamps of death! She understood now, only 
she had learned it all too late. She turned to the 
wall, feeling a lethargic weakness slowly drawing 


864i 


PAULA 


her into itself ; a soft slumber enfolded her, bene- 
ficent in its touch, obliterating and effacing her 
humiliation, regret, and despair. 

Shortly after, the doctor came patiently up- 
stairs again, and found her sleeping. He gave 
strict orders to the old woman to watch her, and 
call him if the faint colour of her lips grew paler 
or her breathing weaker, and then re-descended, 
with wearied steps, to his other patient. Vin- 
cent’s nervous, excitable system seemed to have 
responded extraordinarily to the operation; the 
only danger now was that of possible fever, and 
the doctor hastened to tell him the girl was tran- 
quil and asleep. 

When it was well past midnight, everything 
was still in the villa, and a peaceful quietness had 
settled down upon it, that seemed to correspond 
with the icy solemnity of the frozen night outside. 

In Vincent’s room both stoves had been 
crammed with fuel and burnt steadily with wide 
set doors, and the porcelain of their sides glowing 
at red heat. In the adjoining ante-chamber lay 
the doctor, taking a snatch of necessary sleep, and 
not far from Vincent’s bed, where he had been 
placed to watch the patient, sat Stanhope, his 
arms crossed on a console table and his head 
bowed on them, wrapped in an involuntary 
drowsiness. 

Vincent himself, after restless tossing and in- 
cessant worrying for the girl’s presence, had suc- 
cumbed, too, to the warmth of the room, the wine 


PAUL^A 


365 


and brandy administered, and his own exhaus- 
tion, and full of the thought of to-morrow’s 
promised meeting, had drifted into the gentle, 
soothing sleep of the convalescent. Upstairs, in 
the girl’s room, all was quiet, except for the loud 
monotonous breathing of the old woman who 
dozed in the arm-chair by the stove. 

Paula herself had been asleep, and awoke with 
a sudden shudder of deadly cold and a fluttering 
of her heart she could not calm. She sat up, and 
then started from the bed in helpless terror. She 
seemed to hear a whisper telling her she was 
dying. 

Vincent? Where was he? She could not die 
so far from him. Where had they brought her? 
Like a wounded animal, she staggered to the door 
and opened it. Before her lay a long stone cor- 
ridor, and the moonlight flooded it. The passage 
was cold and silent as the vault of a tomb. Paula 
stood there; her white night-dress touched her 
bare feet, its left sleeve was rolled up to the shoul- 
der, and her bandaged arm hung bare at her side: 
on the floor of the corridor fell the shadow of the 
lace at her throat, and the delicate tracery on the 
stone trembled as her heart -beats shook it. She 
walked forward towards the window with her 
arms outstretched to the walls on either side. It 
was the very attitude in which she had so often 
walked smiling down towards the footlights be- 
fore her dance, amidst the applause of the de- 
lighted house. Only a few paces, and then she 


366 


PAULA 


fell suddenly to her knees ; her ankles were weak 
and useless as cotton wool. 

She made no attempt to rise, but crawled for- 
ward with tremulous haste to the stairs and 
dragged herself down them. They were white 
marble, and without carpets. The descent was 
slow and painful, and each of the white steps took 
some of her remaining warmth. 

When she reached the corridor beneath, all be- 
low her knees had lost feeling and was cold as the 
flooring. His door was there, but a little way off 
now, and its warm crack of light was visible be- 
neath it. She crawled as far as the door and there 
paused, striking against the panels in a strength- 
less heap. The moonlight found her out and fell 
in upon her in one square patch through the upper 
pane of the staircase window, and she looked up ; 
the sky seemed very far, and in it travelled alone 
the moon, high up over the ^snow-white plain in the 
clear cold sky. It was very, very cold. She 
looked at the lonely moon. She too was com- 
mencing that journey each one travels alone. 

She knew that she was dying. She knew that 
the moment had come — the moment of the great 
renunciation. She felt in some overwhelming 
way that the decision had been made, that she was 
to die then, and notliing would intervene to save 
her. But the fear, the horror of death, was 
choked by the great desire to die there by his 
side. If she might have done that! But that 
was forbidden her. She was afraid to enter, lest 


PAULA 


367 : 


he should see her dying or dead. He must be 
saved the shock until he was well and could bear 
it. Her feeble thoughts were still clear and keen 
for him. Here, outside his room, others would 
find her first and conceal her death from him. It 
was hard that the door was closed between them, 
hard that she was shut outside, but still it was 
well, all was quite well now. She knew she was 
dying, but it did not seem so hard, here, so close 
to him, and her life would live on in his veins. 

Within, the room was silent; the shaded night- 
lamp, burned steadily; from the bed came the 
soft, regular breathing of one who slept. As she 
was drifting in stupor out slowly on the cold 
stream of Death, he was drifting back rapidly on 
Life’s warm current to the world. And these 
two souls, that had loved so passionately in life, 
passed close, unknowing, in the darkness, on 
Death’s highway — passed, and so parted, never 
to find each other nor to meet again. 

As he had slept unconscious long ago when she 
registered the vow of her life to him, s^o he slept 
now whilst it was accomplished. It was as if Fate 
itself had lifted him — ^her protector, the man who 
had always striven to save and shield her — aside 
at these two moments, that no shade of responsi- 
bility, no shadow of reproach, could fall on him. 

It grew colder; momentarily the temperature 
sank, and the chilly air drew the last vitality from 
the helpless frame. A slight convulsion shook 
her as the soul tore itself loose from the body and 


368 


PAULA" 


came fluttering to her lips. There was a sigh, a 
soft, contented breath, and the spirit dissolved 
itself into the thin air from her pallid lips. 

She was dead. The law, the major lex, the 
eternal law of the world had been fulfilled to its 
uttermost letter. The love she had fancied she 
could control, and the nature she had thought she 
could crush within her, had risen and crushed her 
in return. She lay outstretched upon the mat 
before his door, stiffening rapidly in the icy at- 
mosphere; her face, upturned to the moonlight, 
was serene and calm, and on her bosom lay the 
shadow from the transverse bars of the window — 
the shadow of a cross. She had borne it, as all 
bear it through this life, the cross of human de- 
sires. 




UEnvoi 


Many years have passed since then, and it .was a 
hot, sultry night in May. Even now, in the youth 
of the early summer, the atmosphere seemed 
heavy, the air in the streets oppressive, as in late 
August. The young pale leaves in the Green 
Park dropped languidly in the still night. With- 
in the theatres the heat was excessive, and the 
lines of stalls seemed to move as the surface of a 
rye field in the breeze, with the sway of innumer- 
able fans. One of the West-end theatres, where 
a popular piece was being played, seemed un- 
usually crowded. The third act was about to 
commence. The stalls had refilled. Two women 
in the front row had just resettled themselves 
after surveying the house. 

“Do you see those two men in the box just 
above us?” whispered one of them to her com- 
panion, behind her fan. “That’s Vincent Hal- 
ham, that one on this side, whom I was telling 
you about; don’t you remember?” 

“Oh, is it?” said the other, putting up her 
opera-glasses discreetly. “Let me see, what was 
it you told me?” 

“Oh, don’t you know. He seduced his friend’s 
wife — that sweet dancer. She was at the Hali- 


870 


PAULA 


bury, I think, and they ran away together; then 
I think he shot the husband, or she did, I don’t 
know quite which, or tried to — anyway they sep- 
arated, and then some time after he sent for her 
to join them, and I suppose they couldn’t hit it 
off, or something, and she committed suicide 
somewhere — I believe in Italy. I am not quite 
sure how it went, it’s such an age ago now; but 
what’s so funny and so interesting is that he is 
quite inconsolable, that he goes everywhere and 
does everything, ‘but he’s never been known to 
smile since’ — ^that sort of idea, you know. Isn’t 
it all romantic and interesting?” 

All this time the other had been scrutinising the 
occupant of the box silently through her glasses. 
“How very handsome he is!” she said softly, as 
she dropped them at last in her lap. “Fancy a 
man like that throwing himself away on a ballet 
dancer!” 

“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” returned the other, 
settling herself complacently in her seat. 

“Some common girl, I suppose, who couldn’t 
write her own name.” 

“I think she was supposed to be rather clever,” 
answered the other, vaguely. “I forget a good 
deal I heard about her. One does forget these 
things. In any case, I don’t suppose she could 
appreciate him; probably only cared about his 
position.” 

“Who is the other one; do you know?” 

“Yes; that’s her brother. Halham always has 


PAULA 


371 


him about with him. They’ve been inseparable 
for years — ever since she died, in fact. Look, 
this is the scene they criticised so in the Era/* 
The two women looked across the footlights, and 
Halham’s peculiarities were temporarily forgot- 
ten. 

He sat in the box just above them, looking 
towards the stage with unseeing eyes. His elbow 
leaned on the velvet ledge, his chin was supported 
on his hand; just so, he had sat and watched 
Paula on her wedding night, bowing by Reeves’s 
side at the Halibury. How he remembered the 
wild passion and agony of that night — his hatred 
and envy of Reeves ! 

And now Reeves was dead, and Paula was 
dead ; and of the unhappy trio only he remained, 
and he would never feel passion again. They 
were both dead, and of them both remained the 
one great marble tomb in the London cemetery, 
where Reeves had ordered his executors to build 
it, with the vacant space beside it that waited ever 
vainly for his wife; and far, far away one other 
little lonely grave, in the barren Ardenza country, 
where she slept under the eternal Alps. 

For years she has been sleeping there, and 
the rains and snows have already defaced the 
carved letters of her name upon the stone, but 
years have not blurred it in his brain. To him it 
seems stamped for ever immutably upon his 
memory. Night after night brings back to him 
the scene enacted y;ears ago in the lonely Italian 


372 


PAULA 


villa, where her young ardent life was poured so 
joyously into his veins. 

Even now it seems to him her heart beats in 
his, her pulse moves within his own. Night after 
night before his closed eyelids stretches the lonely 
Ardenza road winding through the snowy waste, 
the long road over which she had walked so gladly 
in the teeth of the bitter night, bringing to him 
that devoted love, that superhuman passion, that 
had had the strength to conquer death itself. 

His friend had failed him, his wealth, his doc- 
tor’s skill, — all these would have let him pass 
from the world in their midst; it was only this 
girl who had come forward and thrown her body 
across the gates of his tomb, who had refused to 
let him enter, and who had joyfully, delightedly, 
rendered up her life in his stead. 

His strained, absent eyes fell back from the 
glare of the footlights, behind which he only saw 
her face, and wandered over the well of the house 
beneath him. So many of these women were 
known to him. Some of them, he had heard from 
his friends, and, in more cases than one, from 
themselves, loved him. Love! he wondered what 
tests their love would stand: within himself, his 
passions seemed obliterated. These women 
ranked with the women he had known before he 
had met Paula. They seemed mere dolls. She 
stood out alone amongst them all as real and liv- 
ing. With her, and through her, he seemed to 
have known the actual essence of things, the 


PAULA 


373 


reality of human love, the strength of human 
passion ; and the artifices and pretences that pass 
under their name could not satisfy him again. 

The curtain fell, and the applauding told him 
the piece had come to an end. He roused himself, 
and found two sad eyes, that were so like her eyes, 
fixed upon him. 

“Are you ready, Charlie?” he said quietly; 
“shall we go?” 

“Yes. Did you like it?” 

“I really haven’t seen it,” returned Vincent. 
“What was it? You must tell me as we go home. 
I was thinking of something else.” 

The two men went out together into the spring 
night. Vincent did not repeat his query, and the 
other did not speak. In absolute jsilence they 
walked on till Vincent’s rooms were reached. 

“Coming in to-night, Charlie?” he asked. 

Charlie looked closely at the calm, white face 
and the heavy-lidded eyes, with their darkened 
look of pain and repression. “No, I think not,” 
he answered; and after an affectionate “Good- 
night,” walked on home. “What can words 
avail against a grief like that?” he muttered to 
himself. There was a dull pain always at his own 
heart when he thought of that caressing voice, 
those sweet eyes that would never look into his 
again ; and what would that pain be, backed with 
the ache and hunger of an unforgotten passion? 

Vincent went up alone to the empty solitude of 
his rooms. He was resigned. Resignation is the 


374 


PAULA 


unfailing gift of time; but there were moments, 
as now, when the resignation of days ajid years 
broke down under the strain of an irrepressible 
longing. His sitting-room was unlighted, and he 
did not stay to light it, but passed through the 
wavering shadows thrown through it from with- 
out, and went into the inner room and flung him- 
self face downwards on the bed. 

Oh, if he could regain one moment from the 
past! if he could feel again, for one instant, that 
warm heart beneath his own! — the heart that had 
ceased to beat so willingly for him. 

Humanity has three great consolations for the 
loss of the objects of its passions: — To forget, to 
replace, and to hope. But he could not forget the 
girl who had surrendered to him herself, her Art, 
and at last her Life; he could not replace a love 
that was of its nature irreplaceable; and to the 
mateidalist there is not any hope. 


DEI 


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